
So... Valentine's Day has come and gone. Now I will never be the same again.
See, I have a daughter.
Well, actually I have two but only one is in middle school.
And unfortunately for me, she is really pretty.
Luckily, boys are still sort of still outside her world at the moment.
At least until yesterday.
I get home from work, long day, glad to see my darling children frolic towards the door to greet Daddy.
Yeah.
It's good to be the king!
The door opens and the calls of DADDY! ring throughout the house. Ahh. Work slides off the shoulders, the stiffness of the drive home leaves me and I revel in the love of my children...
What the?
Why is my daughter holding a stuffed white puppy?
I didn't buy the stuffed puppy...
Wifey wouldn't buy her one...
What's that scent?
Light, like a gym sock left to dry in the summer sun...
Like stale root beer and baseball cards...
Like the early vestiges of testosterone bubbling to the surface...
A boy.
Not my son either. I know his scent. This is different. This is a boy that likes a girl.
Wait a minute. She hugs me tightly, all giggly and excited, squeezing the puppy. I've never seen her so happy over a stuffed animal. It's never been her thing.
"Where'd uh, you get that puppy there?" I ask innocently, the evil Vader like desire to mind crush some prepubescent boy's trachea slowly building.
"Josh gave it to me! Isn't is cool!" She exclaims gleefully.
It's worse than I thought. There were apparently chocolates included in the deal.
Crap.
I need to step up the schedule a bit.
I was hoping to postpone the whole boy "problem" for at least another year. I need to finish that GPS Tracking Device / earring project I've been working on and the boy (my boy, sometimes referred to as my son or simply "The Clone") must get his Ninja Training soon.
Blast!
I needed more time.
I knew this boy was trouble. He sends other kids to knock on my door to ask if she can come out to play.
Come out to play!?!
I know exactly what's on the devious little mind of yours mister.
I was eleven once! For an entire year! Yeah. And in between episodes of Transformers, Voltron and G.I. Joe all I ever thought about was Brenda Colon!
Not that she even knew who I was mind you. That's completely irrelevant to this situation.
Yeah. I know.
You and your little chocolate candies and stuffed puppy.
I'm hip to your little game mister!
Where's my shovel? Where's the shotgun!?!
Crap.
What did I do to deserver beautiful daughters? You want to be happy about it. I ought to be happy about it (make no mistake, I AM happy about it...) but the price of beautiful daughters are the boys that will inevitably follow.
Lucky for me there is a nice big plot of undeveloped conservation land behind the house so if little mister man gets any ideas I got plenty of room to hide the body.
Sure he's a good kid. Polite and maybe he looks after her on the bus to school and comes from a decent home and gets good grades and is in the band and drama club and is really nice to her...
This is my baby we are talking about here. I remember bringing her home from the hospital and letting her fall asleep on my chest afraid that I might break her if I moved!
Fine.
She has to grow up sometime, right?
And she is going to most likely want to go on dates and have boyfriends and ....
someday...
eventually...
get married.
Fine.
I get it.
I don't have to like it.
And I am going to litter the sidewalk with the wreckage of boys that make her do anything except smile.
Usually I feel better after a rant.
Not today.
I was going to go in a whole different direction today. I was going to talk about Bloomberg warming up on the sidelines for a 3rd Party Run and how I was considering tossing my hat in to the ring as well.
(Vote Cobra Commander in '08!)
But I have bigger fish to fry today.
Boys are around and they know she's cute.
Crap.
Labels: Cobra Commander, Daughters, Ninja Training, The Clone