Thursday, October 16, 2008

"dad, you are soooooo shallow"

These are the words spoken to me by my oldest daughter at dinner. She doesn't know I'm the wise nonprofitprophet. To her, I am just dad. And one of my jobs of being "just dad" is to annoy her.
My daughter is 15. She is very beautiful, both inside and outside. Both her mother and I wish we could have been more like her at that age. She is very confident and comfortable with who she is. I was miles away from that at 15.
So she has a boyfried. Okay, she is into recycling because this boyfriend was her original boyfriend from 8th grade. They broke up, she got another boyfriend, they broke up, now she's back with the original. Like I said, recycling.
And we are eating dinner and she tells us that another girl friend of hers from youth told her that one of the boys at youth really liked her... and the story goes on. I hear said boys name. Said boy comes from wealthy family so being my typical dad self, I say "what's wrong with that boy". And she just looks at me. I say, "hey, have you seen his grandparents checkbook?" and something to the effect that you can love rich people just as easy as anyone.
She just looks at me. Yep, that look you are imagining is the exact one. Like "what are you saying too me?" look. And she utters the words: "You are so shallow".
Of course, I say "what?" like a good dorky clueless dad should do to his teenage daughter and she just huffs and says something.
Secretely however, I am very pleased on the inside. Somehow, somewhere along the way, she has learned that money isn't everything. To follow your heart is important and not to like someone because of status. She hates labels and mean people as well. Just like her dad. And I like to think I had a little part to play in that. You know, as much as a dorky uncool shallow dad can.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, wow. Hopefully she'll outgrow this in a coupla years...

KJ said...

yep...the wonderful world of teenagers. sounds like you're doing a good job there.

Anonymous said...

I
FEEL
YOU
DAWG!!!!!!!!