My 12-year-old daughter is in the seventh grade. I am quickly finding out that the difference between sixth grade and seventh grade is like four grades. If sixth grade was the Beach Boys, then seventh grade would have to be the Beastie Boys. Every afternoon my “little girl” comes home from school and says something more outrageous than the day before. Recently she dropped this little piece of worldly wisdom on me: “Girls like what they hear, and boys like what they see. That’s why boys lie and girls wear makeup.”
At first I sort of laughed. Then I paused and realized how profound a statement it was. My daughter has already figured out the distinct differences and the desires of the two sexes at the young age of 12. I’m more than three times her age, and I’m still struggling with how the opposite sex works. I still have lots of unanswered questions: Women like flowers, right? But they don’t like plants in the house because of the risk of bug infestations? And they like candy, but not the kind of candy that makes them fat? They like new vacuums, but never, ever, ever, ever get them one as an anniversary present? I truly don’t know. My wife, whom I love, can testify to the fact that I still don’t have a single clue about women. Poor thing.
But my daughter has the entire male/female universe figured out already: “Girls rule because boys drool.” And it isn’t just the words that come out of my daughter’s mouth, it is the full-body expression of what she says. She is very passionate about her views on the world, and it’s expressed in her body language. There is the eye rolling, the jutting of the hips, and the hand gestures. She has the ability to indicate her lack of patience with my uncoolness through simple hand movements: “Talk to the hand, ’cause the face ain’t listening.” She does all of this with her hand while simultaneously holding a cell phone, which she never sets down. Ironically she speaks in text messaging lingo to me, “OMG LMAO, Dad. You’re so old!”
Since my daughter seemed so intelligent —after all, she answered most of life’s questions (oftentimes rhyming while doing it)—I figured she should become a psychologist or something brainy like that when she grows up. I asked her what she wanted to do with her life, and she looked at me like I was an idiot.
“Dad,” she said, “I want to be a guitar player in a rock band.”
I asked, “OK, well, what if that doesn’t work out?”
She shrugged her shoulders, “Then … I guess I’ll play bass.”
“So, no plans for college?”
“Well, I suppose I could do college for a little bit, while I’m waiting for my rock band to hit it big.”
I realized that even though she has the answers to some of life’s questions, she still needs to mature some. One of the things that keeps me up at night worrying about my soon-to-be teenage daughter is how agreeable she is with the behavior of some of her friends.
“My friend, she loves this boy at school so much that sometimes all she does is sit in her room and cry for three days.”
“Does the boy like her?”
“I doubt it. They’ve never spoken.”
“So … you think that it’s OK to cry in your room for three days about a boy you’ve never spoken to?”
“Yes, Dad. She looooooooooves him! Duh!”
Uh oh. My daughter is a romantic. That smells like trouble. I realize that my daughter is a bit boy crazy. She found boys, but seventh grade boys are more interested in pouring salt on slugs and kicking a soccer ball at a concrete wall (and are happy when the ball bounces back to them). Their boyish lives (without women) are quite simple. Boys that age don’t know what to do with girls yet. They would rather spend their time killing one another in a game of Call of Duty than call a girl on the phone. Of course, I’m showing my age when I refer to “calling someone you like.”
“Dad, nobody calls anyone on a phone, they text.”
I should have already known that since when I call my daughter’s cell phone she doesn’t answer it. Then 10 seconds later, I get a text message that says, “What do U want?”
“I want you to answer your phone.”
“Y?”
“Because if you don’t answer it, you’ll regret this very moment because it will have been the last opportunity you had to answer the phone before I took it away from you and threw it in the ocean forever!” NOTE: Texting this angry manifesto on my phone (and then proof reading it) took me five minutes. In that time, my daughter had 14 text exchanges with three different friends. Eventually, all I get back from her is:
“K.”
Thinking she got the message, I wait 30 seconds or so for her to call me. But she never does. Then I text her: “WHY HAVEN’T YOU CALLED ME?????”
She replies, “U wanted me 2 answr the phone. U call me.”
Rob and his wife are going to have a long decade of four years of high school with their daughter.
This article appears in May 10-17, 2012.
