Teaching My Daughters to Punch People in the Eye
Or how the world doesn’t owe them anything
When my oldest daughter was a toddler, I was walking in downtown Petaluma when we saw a mom with two kids walking ahead of us. The younger of the two was a girl who was closest to us; she was probably around four. My daughter, unable to distinguish the difference, believes babies are any human that is not clearly an adult.
So she called out to this girl and said, “Baby!”
The girl turned around, clearly upset by this. She got in my daughter’s face and angrily said, “I’m not a baby!”
So…
I closed my fist, and I punched her in the eye. It felt good, too. My fully formed fist right into her still-molding skull.
The mom turned around and asked me if I knew why her daughter was crying, and I meekly responded, “I don’t know. I guess she doesn’t like being called a baby.”
I like to think I’m a good father, and if my daughter would’ve been of age to understand this interaction and talk and ask me to punch this girl, I would’ve. Because I like to think that I’m the kind of father who would punch anyone my daughter asks me to punch.
There are helicopter parents, and then there is me, a Rock ’Em Sock ’Em kind of dad — dislodge…
