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It was all for the asking, a couple of nights
ago. A tangled knot of the great unwashed showed up at our doorstep, full of
bluff boisterousness and juvenile humor.
That's right, four teenaged boys. None of whom, it
might usefully be pointed out, were related to your humble scribe. We watched a
DVD together! And, there was an upside:
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As we hunkered in one room, we were joined not
just by the lumpen teenaged masses, but by the Biscuit herself, making a charity
appearance in the family room. With her
actual
family.
For an extended period of
time.
This
was such an unusual event, that we didn't dare remark upon it, almost didn't
dare to breathe: If we even so much as whispered our surprise, it could, like
Marcus Aurelius' Roman Republic, vanish like some ephemeral puff of
air.
Later, I remarked to the Hobbit
that it was a very simple thing to spend some quality family time with our
eldest daughter: All we needed to do was to invite four teenaged surfer-dudes
over, and we'd see all of her we wanted. Not that, necessarily, we'd receive any
glint of human recognition in return. But! We'd be building a bridge to the
future!
A future which a father,
truth be told, sometimes shudders to
contemplate.
So, yah, I found a bit
of irony in that.
For reasons which
are still obscure to me, but having something to do with the maximum number of
heathen man-children that could be accommodated at the lead surfer-dude's
hovel, warren, burrow, den of iniquity and vice, home, it came
to pass that the least objectionable teenaged male (LOTM) was required to
overnight at our house, upon our couch. Downstairs. Insulated from the family
quarters proper by a dense force field of parental moral severity. I
hoped.
But, as it turned out, after
the movie ended and the other rogues decamped, I went upstairs to my office
(which is what I call the place I play video games and write this blog) to spend
a moment or two playing Doom3 and was joined by the LOTM until I had killed
enough demon spawn to satisfy our collective bloodlust. And, the hour being late
indeed, I escorted him back to his couch, where I wished him a good night's
sleep, and nothing more besides.
But
that old irony wheel keeps turning, don't it? Turns out the next day, in convo
with the Kat (who is a reliable informant in all things which might tend to
discredit her elder sibling), that the Biscuit had been heard to complain to her
girlfriends that she had had a cute boy spend the night at her house, but that
he spent the whole night hanging with her
dad.
Which I found
delicious.
Oh, I know I'm not going
to win every time. I know eventually she'll grow up and move out and all that.
But I'm manning the barricades anyway, in any way I can. And I'm trying to forge
a common cause with the local rabble, as well. Tomorrow, in fact, I'm taking
them to the local skeet range. As it turns out, I'm pretty handy with a
scattergun, and can hit more than my fair share of moving targets.
I just think it's useful that they
know this.
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