The newspaper that runs my weekly, Anxiously-Awaited column on its website has not updated this week. That is, of course, because the person who usually does that was otherwise engaged, namely having neurosurgery. So we can give her a break, no?
I'm posting it here, partly for that reason and partly because it's been such a bizarre week, very little sleep and little food, for a variety of reasons, and I can't really think of anything to write that wouldn't be exceptionally pathetic. Not that this isn't pathetic, but in a different way...
Eight Other Rules
I’ve never been a normal man, and now I guess it’s too late to hope, but still I do. See, I think there’s a fine line between being unique, eccentric, and weird, and I might have crossed it.
It’s not that I’m miserable or anything. My wife knew I wasn’t normal when she married me. My kids adjusted. The dog doesn’t know any better.
Still, I can get a little wistful for normalcy. Not that I want to traffic in stereotypes, but it seems to me that normal men build stuff, fix stuff, hunt stuff, and burp, and I’m just no good at any of that.
My daughter discovered this a few years ago, when she was a teenager and certain male-type people started hanging around, ringing my doorbell or calling my phone or (in one instance) sending slightly off-color and suggestive instant messages to her, which I know about because I read one.
Beth would get very serious in these situations, and plead with me. “Please, Daddy, be nice to him when he comes over, OK? You can be so intimidating.”
She was just projecting, of course, trying to conjure up a sitcom dad where none existed, but I made an effort for her sake. I practiced growling and muttering. I took to wearing my tool belt at all times and murmuring about running some conduit. I drank milk right out of the carton, picked my nose, scratched in public, and went to tractor pulls. I did mental exercises to conjure up long-lost memories of when I was an adolescent and just exactly what I was thinking about when it came to the opposite sex, which is not a fun exercise when you have a daughter. I really, really tried, but I couldn’t pull it off, so finally we had to have a little talk.
“Look, Beth,” I said. “The truth is, I really don’t dislike these boys you date. Actually, most of them seem pretty decent and interesting. As for the rest, I just don’t really care, as much as I know you want me to.”
To her credit, she managed to avoid a crestfallen look and just nodded. As I say, she learned a long time ago that I wasn’t normal. Still, she grasped for a straw.
“But don’t you feel SOMETHING?”
“Yes. I feel sorry for them.”
And I did, too. I’d look out the window and see one of these guys pull into the driveway to take my daughter to the movies or a party or the prom, and sympathy would be the emotion of the moment.
“Fresh meat,” I’d think, shaking my head sadly, and wander off to drink some more milk. I couldn’t help it. My daughter ate boys for breakfast. It was like watching an execution.
Bruce Cameron, a Colorado columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, once wrote a piece about fathers, daughters, and dating, creating The Dream Column. You never know. He called it “Eight Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter,” and it evolved into a best-selling book and then a TV series that killed John Ritter.
Mr. Cameron seems to be a normal man, with normal feelings and a normal daughter. I, on the other hand, met my daughter when she was approximately one second old and knew immediately I was in trouble. She exited the womb with attitude. Talk about intimidating.
Beth lives in Texas now, 2000 miles away, and her love life is her own business, as it should be. It’s a relief, actually. I hate wearing that tool belt.
Still, on the off chance that a potential daughter date discovers this column, I thought I’d steal from Bruce Cameron a bit and list my own eight rules. Which are…
1. Run.
2. Don’t blame me.
3. Don’t blame her mother, either.
4. Don’t offer to arm wrestle. She’s played the cello since the fifth grade. It will be humiliating.
5. Don’t talk politics unless you agree absolutely with her. She doesn’t suffer fools easily.
6. Don’t try telling her she’s beautiful, talented, or brilliant. She knows this.
7. Don’t attempt to persuade her to change her mind. She will exercise her woman’s prerogative but only on her timetable. It would be a mistake, like driving into a tornado. Best not.
8. Did I mention not arm wrestling? Get her to tell the story of the church youth group trip when the boys were trying to impress each other by seeing how far they could throw a football. She had never held a football. Get her to tell the story.
And, if you’re smart, even if your favorite movie is “The Godfather,” you’ll tell her it’s “The Goodbye Girl.” You might buy her a chocolate shake, too. Trust me on this.
And you might, if you have some sense of time and history, mention to her that once a 26-year-old man showed her Seattle at daybreak for the very first time. You might mention that now, almost 21 years later, he will still wander the house, waiting for her. That he loves her, and misses her. That he knows there will be other men in her life, and he wishes them all well, and he’s glad to be out of the picture, but not all that glad, and not all that abnormal, as it turns out.
5:02:52 PM 
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