Everyone do the Jerry Lee!

I’ve got two kids. I have a boy who’s 3 and a little girl who’s just over the age of ‘baby’ and on to toddler. What I mean by this is that she walks and she can say some shit, and perhaps most significantly, she’s just gotten to the point where there’s no mistaking that she’s female. She doesn’t look like a baby as much as she looks like a very small little girl. She’s also almost supernaturally cute. Now, I know this sounds like bullshit. Every parent loves their kids and thinks they’re beautiful, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but this little girl is actually quite cute. I get stopped on the street by people all the time just so they can go on and on about how cute she is. As someone who already walked around with one baby just a few years ago, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that this particular child, this little girl, gets an unusual amount of attention due to the fact that she’s pretty remarkably cute looking. Maybe she’ll grow up to be hideously ugly, maybe she’ll grow out of her cuteness by the time she gets into first grade. I don’t know. I’m not claiming anything except for the simple empirical fact that right now, motherfuckers will risk talking to a surly, heavily tattooed strange man to get a good look at this kid.

One extremely common way this manifests is people going “oh, man…she’s pretty. When she turns 13, watch out, papa!” or something like this and then having a laugh. This laugh is often accompanied by a knowing wink and then a resigned sigh. The implication here, obviously is that if she maintains her current level of attractiveness, once she goes through puberty, there are gonna be a flock of teenaged boys buzzing around her, presumably all attempting to fuck her, which is gonna be hell for me because I’m her father and well, no father likes to see a bunch of dipshit teenagers trying to fuck their daughter. This will further manifest in her being crazy, because no thirteen year old on earth is ready for the kind of attention being an attractive female brings. I mean, I think this is the main thrust of the joke/cautionary warning, right?

Okay, so first of all, thanks a lot, random stranger for sexualizing my fucking toddler. That’s great. I’m thrilled that the first conversation you want to have upon seeing a cute baby is the amount of people that are gonna want to fuck her some day. That’s just wonderful. Secondly, yes, sure she’s gonna be a crazy bitch, but in what universe is EVERY SINGLE TEENAGED GIRL not a completely crazy bitch, at the very least to their parents, if not the world at large? And finally, no. I don’t care about things like shitty teenaged boys flocking around. Everyone that goes through puberty (that doesn’t have some weird damage) comes out the other side with uh…physical needs, and my children are gonna be no exception to that and that’s fine with me. Am I gonna like the dudes she ‘dates (provided that she even is interested in dudes)? Probably not all of them. Just like I probably won’t like the dipshit friends that my son brings around and emulates either. In fact, I bet there’s even gonna be some crossover there, and the dude that my son most idolizes, who I most think is a dildo, will maybe end up buzzing around my daughter, and maybe she’ll absolutely love him. That shit happens all the time.

No, I don’t have a problem with any of that. Everyone needs to find their sexual identity and it’s never an easy thing for anyone, but it’s an important part of growing up, and I have no more a problem with my daughter going through that than I do my son, which is to say it’s not my favorite topic of conversation, but what the fuck am I gonna do? That’s how life works.

What I DO have a problem with is the first part of this…the part where strangers feel comfortable casually sexualizing my small child. The part I have a much bigger problem with is the part where she gets to be about thirteen and dudes MY age start ogling her. This, obviously, is face punching territory.

I have an acquaintance who’s in his 40’s who’s supposedly dating an 18-19 year old girl. I haven’t seen this dude in years and I don’t talk to him, but he’s definitely the kind of guy who would be in his 40’s and date a teenager. Apparently, he recently went to her house to meet her parents and when her dad opened the door, the dad looked out, quickly punched this acquaintance of mine in the nose, breaking it, and then shut the door. I think this is a pretty good move.

It’s hard though, because I know that I’ve been guilty of finding myself staring at women that are too young for me to be staring at, simply because well…they possess the features that were designed to attract the attention of men. I know that a lot of dudes, no matter how stand up and righteous they are have found themselves in that situation. It’s an unconscious thing that just sort of happens, and if you’re the kind of human being that’s worth a shit, you realize what’s going on, quickly admonish yourself and then move on with your day. The problem is that most human beings aren’t worth a shit, particularly the males. Most men are gross shitheads who don’t give two fucks about anything besides the happiness of their own dongs. In fact most men, even the good ones, find themselves tempted and taunted by their dicks pretty constantly, and sometimes good men succumb to the taunting of their own dicks. Now, obviously being a grownup and banging a thirteen year old is horrifically wrong, and it’s a pretty character-defining move. There’s no argument that goes “oh, he’s a good guy, but he just found himself in that situation where one thing led to another and suddenly BOOM, he’s fucking that thirteen year old girl.” It just doesn’t EVER work that way, because that’s a fucked up, wrong thing to do. It’s more likely that you could explain away a murder.

HOWEVER, dudes aren’t supposed to cheat on their wives or hit their wives or hit their kids or sit around and do meth all day while there’s no food in the fridge and motherfuckers do that shit all the time. ALL THE TIME. It’s creepy. That’s what it is. This species, human beings, with insanely horny men and females that start to look like women when they’re still children…it’s a fucked up combination that probably worked really well back in the cave days and shit, but now there are just too many dementos walking around. I dunno. I shouldn’t have started this train of thought…sheesh.

Anyway, yeah, when my kid becomes a teenager I’m in for a real shit sandwich buffet. Thanks for reminding me.