Monday, November 8, 2010

Note to Self: If You're Going to be a Superhero, Wear Shoes...

My wife and I were awoken just after 3AM Sunday morning to screams coming from the parking lot of our apartment complex. We live in a really nice community, so the disturbance got our attention rather easily. Peering through the anonymity of two-inch window blinds in our third floor domain, we speculated as to the nature of what in the wide, wide world of domestic violence was going on out there.
At first we thought we heard a child crying, which brought about an immediate call to action for both of us. Traci dialed 911 while I continued to spy from the safety of our living room a hundred yards away.  While on the phone with the dispatcher, a light came on in the car, allowing us to faintly make out two people – neither of which to our relief were children – who looked to be hitting each other. The then driver appeared to climb on top of the passenger as the light turned back off. That’s when the worst case scenario hit us. What if this girl was being raped?
I grabbed a pair of jeans from the bedroom floor while Traci was on the phone again, telling the dispatcher of our suspicions and that the police needed to speed things up. A young blonde woman got out of the passenger side of the car and began to run from the car as the driver’s door opened. Even in the darkness, I could read the expression on Traci’s face telling me to hurry.
The frigidness of the cement delivered one forceful blow after another with each collision of my bare feet against the hardened sidewalk. My feet were growing numb, and pain began shooting through my bad left ankle. I remember trying to not think about it and wondered as I ran when it was that summer had officially left us and the night had gotten so cold. I was freezing and regretted not putting on tennis shoes or a jacket. That’s when I saw her, wandering around the grassy knoll where resident dog owners let their canines go poo and neglect to dispose of it.
I knew immediately that this African-American girl in her early twenties was definitely not the blonde girl that we’d seen get out of the car; she must have been the driver. I could tell from her clumsy steps and slurred words as she called out to me that she was was totally faced.
There was an overwhelming urge to say something witty about dodging poo land mines, but I let it go. Once the girl was close enough for me to conclude that she was physically okay, part of me wished she’d fall face first into a nice fresh one. I was no longer a concerned father. I was just a man who had been woken up in the middle of the night because two irresponsible girls had decided to take advantage of the loophole allowing bars to stay open an extra hour due to the time change and weren't man enough to handle their liquor.
I tried my best to find solace in knowing that our worst fears were just products of overactive imaginations, but it didn’t keep me from lying awake on the couch the next couple of hours in a state of pissedoffidness.
As Sunday managed to drag on, it brought a certain clarity that helped lead me to following conclusions: If you're going to be a superhero, wear shoes. I also needed to work on a new manifesto as a father.
It’s not good enough just to try and teach my kids to go all Spike Lee and do the right thing, to make friends who won’t take them down the path of unrighteousness, or more importantly, to not eat the last two Oreos in the package that I purposefully hid behind the boxes of cereal in the pantry. I decided that everything Kacie will ever need she can have from the confinement of our home. Check it:
1.   School? She can go virtual and attend online. The only good things about school itself when I was growing up were Pizza Fridays and when the final bell of the day rang. Let’s face it – the pizza wasn’t that great.
2.   Interaction with friends? She’ll go old school and reinvent letter writing for a generation that’s forgotten that words and phrases don’t always need to be abbreviated and how punctuation marks are for more than just creating different smiley faces. And she can have three sleepovers a month. Maybe. We should probably just start with two. Or one. Yeah, let’s start with one for now and see how that goes.
3.   Exercise? Wii Fit.
4.   Sports? Wii Sports.
5.   College? Again, online. Between that and ESPN U she can get a higher education and still follow her university’s athletic programs. Go, team!
6.   Dating? Yeah right.
7.   Career? We have stay-at-home moms. There’s even the urban legend of the stay-at-home dad (a.k.a the aspiring writer). Why not the stay-at-home daughter?
8.   Marriage? Does the phrase “over my dead body” ring a bell?
When Traci got home that evening, I shared with her my newfound enlightenment. She laughed and said “good job, honey.” She may as well have patted me on the head and fed me a treat after neglecting to bag my poo from the grassy knoll. But I got it. I understood what she was thinking, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, Traci was right.
Regrettably, I can’t lock Kacie in her room for the rest of her life, not because it’s cruel and unusual, but because she deserves the right to make stupid choices that trip her up in life, causing her to land face first into a fresh one of her own making. I just have to teach her that sometimes the best part of falling down comes in knowing that you’re able to get back up.

Sounds easy enough, right?