A Dad’s Eye View
The Boy-Girl Demolition Derby BY RICK EPSTEIN
A
ROUND THE TIME OF her 10th Valentine’s Day, my oldest daughter Marie observed, “Y’know, Dad, some of the boys in my class are starting to act like human beings.” “Don’t be fooled,” I said. “They’re just evolving into another kind of animal – the kind that wants to follow you home.” That would have been a good moment to put her into suspended animation like they do in sci-fi movies with space travelers whose destination is years and years away. For sons and daughters who are to miss the painful and confusing years of sexual awakening, I think we could set the wake-up time for age 25. Why is this a good idea? Around the time of Marie’s announcement about boys, young love was festering on our street. My 7-year-old daughter Sally kept me informed. Our neighbor Billy, age 12, had been making time with Rachel, a seventhgrader who babysat our kids after school. “But then Rachel dumped him,” Sally reported. “DUMPED him?” I asked. “You make him sound like a load of garbage. Why did Rachel BREAK UP with him?” “She saw him kissing Heather (a sixth-grader who lives on our street). But Heather doesn’t really like Billy. She was just trying to make her regular boyfriend jealous.”
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Sally went on to say that Billy wanted to make Rachel feel sorry for jilting him, so he had gone out onto his porch roof and threatened to jump. “And did he jump?” I asked. “Sure,” she said, “But he didn’t get hurt. He does it all the time, but usually it’s for fun and not for love.” Apparently, on weekdays from 3 to 6 p.m., when these middleschoolers should’ve been indoors playing violent video games,
minding my kids, or plagiarizing Wikipedia, they were out on the street reveling in some kind of hormonal happy hour, bashing away at each other’s emotions like drunks with hammers. Which brings to mind my own first love. She was a fifth-grade enchantress named Jeanette Scott. Although she was extremely not-interested, I’d walk her home from the bus stop every day. Jeanette loved jumping-rope, so I joined in to be with her. Sure, prizefighters jump rope, but they don’t do it with two girls turning it for them while chanting: B my name is Betty And my husband’s name is Bill. We live in Batesville And we sell bowling balls. My campaign was not advanced. According to Greek legend, sirens were sea nymphs whose seductive song would lure sailors to their deaths on coastal rocks. Whenever we’d drive past the Scotts’ house, my dad would put his hand to his ear and say, “I can hear the siren song.” (Dad had more ways to warn of treachery and disaster than Crayola has crayons.) One night at the ice rink, Jeanette laid bare her feelings for me. I had skated to the sidelines to chat with her, when, without preamble, she coolly poured a cup of hot chocolate over my head. Her friends laughed. The cocoa, flavored with melted hair
product, was bitter in my mouth as I skated away, a tragic figure, vowing to love more carefully or not at all. It’s an ugly business, this boygirl stuff. It’s tough to experience and it’s tough to observe. Oh, look! Here’s 25-year-old Marie coming out of her 15-year hibernation. She yawns and asks, “Did I miss anything?” “Not much,” I reply. “The Beanie Baby market never rebounded, and you missed some Harry Potter books and movies. Video stores died. Oh! And we elected a black president. We’re having a pandemic, your school is closed, and if you go anywhere you have to wear a surgical mask. On a personal level, you missed a lot of unpleasantness as your fickle and sadistic classmates acted out bizarre parodies of normal human relationships. You missed some cruelty, rejection, betrayal and heartache.” “Thanks, Dad, I appreciate it,” she said. “But you didn’t escape entirely,” I confessed. “There are almost 300 messages on your phone. I listened to them. Right after you went dormant, a boy texted asking you out, and his girlfriend found out. She started spreading lies about you, causing more boys to call and text wanting a date. Then A LOT of girls called and texted and left horrible messages. And they’re still leaving them. Want some Cheerios?” RICK EPSTEIN can be reached at rickepstein@yahoo.com.
O R E G O N F A M I LY . C O M
FEBRUARY 2021
