Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Oh No, Another Boy!

You know how I told you about K and the boy Z here? Well he's still around, more than ever actually. K spends about twenty six hours a day communicating with the fellow in some way or another. Most of the the time it's via MSN or Facebook, with breaks in which they resort to phone calls or texts.

After some reluctance and failure to accept things I'm now getting used to the situation. It's one of K being physically in the room but not really in it whenever she's with me, or not with me, if you see what I mean.

Z is seemingly quite a decent sort of kid, in that grungy hasn't washed for some weeks but only looks like that because he really washes every day or his Mum will ground him big time, sort of way. And he still plays the drums. So he's alright, in as far as boyfriends, a word I use with the greatest of discomfort, for one of my daughters go.

For fourteen years I was the most important man in K's life. I got used to the position, that of authority, wisdom and influence. I got used to being the man in her life. Then, even though this whatever you might want to call it with Z, might only last for a matter of the tiniest fraction of K's life, I became redundant. Redundant that is in all but the supply of money, it seems I'm still good for that.

Still life sailed on with me getting used to my new position with the comfort of thinking that girls and their Dads are always okay in the end. As I told you here there are positives to the new situation anyhow. Then, some weeks ago, I became ever so slightly conscious of A, the older sister, getting just that little bit more moody than normal.

Most of you girls will know that to notice a fifteen or sixteen year old girl becoming a bit more moody than normal is akin to spotting that driver, the one on the Galle Road in the rush hour, using his horn a bit much. Or to spot a Leopard and criticise him for being a bit evasive. So I hadn't paid much attention to A and her change in behaviour.

Then she mentioned him, several times in one morning. In that casual, dropping him oh so nonchalantly into the conversation so my Dad will get used to it but won't suspect anything kind of way. He's called F, he likes Muse, but I don't fall for tactics like that, and for several weeks he's made guest appearances in conversations between A and I that he's really had no right to be in.

As well as being the birthday of the legendary Lady Divine, yesterday was also A's birthday, her sixteenth, which, as Indi would probably say, kinda freaked me out like. In the morning I popped round there to say happy birthday, to A's place that is, not Lady D's. The door was opened by A, dressed up to the nines because F was coming round as he wanted to "talk" to her about something.

She was wearing more make up than one of those perfume girls in a department store who's decided to go for an interview to be Ronald McDonald. She was glammed up, as her Dad it shocked me, in a nice way.

As the father of girls this is what we have to contend with; the thought of some teenage scamps sniffing around your offspring, trying to do all the things that we used to try with girls and being all manly when their voice has barely broken. It's weird. We want them to grow up, we feel proud of them and happy to watch them mature. But damn, it's a challenge sometimes.

Oh well, at least F likes Muse.

7 comments:

Magerata said...

Happy B'day to A and congrats to you for handling the fatherhood so well!
Our neighbors are enjoying their life with a teenage daughter and it's like a Sri Lankan wedding everyday! firecrackers, Speakers on coconut trees and all! Makes me really pray to the stork to never to deliver a daughter to my door step, if I ever get married that is, after running around with all these girls!

Lady divine said...

A and I have the same b'day?

Shah!

nice! :)

I remember what my teenage days were like.. this post made me travel back in time.. in my mind that is..:)

PseudoRandom said...

Aww :D So wait, K's boy is a drummer and A's boy likes Muse? Your girls really know how to choose boyfriends you'd approve of ;-)

Let me take this moment to wish you good luck - it only gets worse from here :D

Rhythmic Diaspora said...

Magerata - I wouldn't swap them for the world, but they're a tough challenge at times for sure!

LD - same day, only separated by a few years. I may have to ask you for advice soon.

PR - thanks for the good luck PR, you're right, they do know how to pick thme.

David Blacker said...

I think it was Wilbur Smith who said that daughters were God's revenge on you for having been a man -- that you would live in eternal fear that she'd meet someone just like you at that age.

aufidius said...

Yeah, my sisters are generally nice - but they are at their nicest when they need our father to get some work done! typical daughters ;)

And yes, you will be tested in the coming times and very good luck with that! :)

Rhythmic Diaspora said...

DB - If either of them met a boy who was like I was at that age I'd have nothing to worry about. It's boys who are like I wanted to be at that age who worry me!

The Auf - Thank you, I'll need it.