Another Parental Milestone

Dateline: Last Wednesday, 5:30am. I'm up in my office, which is on the 3rd floor of my house, "working" when I hear the pitter-patter of 9-year-old feet coming up the stairs. In a moment my older daughter is standing behind me.

"Daddy," she said, "the living room television is not working and there is a cable down in the back yard."

I try to mentally process this information but, hey, it was 5:30am and, as I've noted before in this Blog, I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree. What comes through my mind are a series of Caveman-like short sentences: House getting new siding. Workmen unhook cable. TV not working. TV not working because workmen unhook cable.

I pull up CBS.Sportsline on the 'net. Am distracted. College hoops. Jeez, Maryland kicked Hampton's ass. MEAC sucks. Huh? What were we talking about?

"Daddy, can you fix it?"

I say some more short sentences to myself: Fix what? Oh, yeah - TV. Last theory wrong. Cable not unhooked. Cable provides TV and Internet. Internet working, so TV should work.

What I want to say to my daughter at this point is the following: "Honey, I am certain that the cable coming into our home is not disconnected, so we'll need to consider some alternate theories as to why the living room television is inoperational. To help diagnose the problem, I would like you to check the television in my bedroom to see if it is working properly. That will help us determine whether the problem is a systemic one from our cable television service, or whether it is a decreased functionality of the living room television itself."

That is what I wanted to say to her, but that is not what I actually said to her.

What I actually said, given that it was 5:30am, I'm not very smart and I was distracted by reading an Internet article about sports, were another series of incomprehensive Caveman sentences: "Um ... can you, uh, go into my room? The TV. You know, uh. Turn it on. Um ... uh. Hmm. Can you see if ..."

My 9-year-old finished the sentence: "... if it is as fucked up as the television downstairs?"

Silence.

My automatic response, which I was somehow able to choke back, was to ask her to repeat what she just said. Instead I turned around and, for the first time during this entire conversation, looked at her. There she stood, innocent, smiling, pleasantly waiting for my directive -- should she see if my bedroom television was fucked up, too, or not?

"Uh, honey, can you ... uh ... think of another way to say that?"

For a moment, she seemed perplexed at my question. "You want me to see if the television is as screwed up as the downstairs ..."

"How about checking to see if my bedroom television is working properly?," I said.

"Okay, Daddy," and she dutifully bounded down the stairs to find out.

----

It is now a week later and, thankfully, I still haven't received the feared telephone call from my daughter's Catholic school principal. It hasn't come yet, but I know now that it will.

"Mr. Buckman," he will say. "We are concerned about your older daughter's answer to question number six on her math test today."

"Yes?," I will say.

"The question asked her 'How much is 15 times 62?' Your daughter's response was, 'How the fuck should I know?'"

I will wait a few seconds before saying anything, pretending to be thoughtful. I will then express serious concern for my daughter's choice of language, and I will show complete sensitivity for the matters at hand.

And then I will blame her mother for teaching her to talk like that.

---

Free Hit Counter