Thirty-something speaks
The joy of embarrassment
Mike Maddock

A wonderful thing happened on the way to my kids' school the other day. I discovered my mere presence is finally an embarrassment to my oldest daughter. She just turned nine years old, and while I had not expected this stage to rear its beautiful head quite so soon, I've been looking forward to it for a long time.

I drive my two girls to school almost every day, and I usually drop them off in the carpool line like most all other parents, but on that particular day they had some extra stuff to carry so we had to park for me to help them get all the stuff inside the school (much to my oldest daughter's dismay).

"It's embarrassing," she squirmed, "No other third graders walk in with their parents. Y'all just stay a few feet behind me and let me go in by myself."

Well, being the conscientious and opportunistic parent I am, I couldn't let this moment just pass by. So my youngest daughter (age seven) and I held hands and started skipping through the parking lot singing, "This third grader is walking with her daddy...third grader with her daddy!"

Once she managed to get a good ten feet in front of us, she turned around and barked a borrowed line from the movie The Incredibles , "You're not affiliated with me!" Then she disappeared into the crowd of students away from the humiliation of being seen with her old man.

There are, of course, two sides to this new development. On one hand, I'll get hours of enjoyment inserting myself into private conversations with her friends, doing sing and dance numbers at her parties, and following her into school while skipping and chanting whenever possible.

On the other hand, a red-hot laser beam aimed straight at my heart has replaced the adoring glow that can only come from Daddy's little girl. Where I once needed a hammer and chisel just to pry her away from me, now I'll need to be on my best behavior and likely in some sort of disguise just to be in the same general vicinity. I went from King of the World to bumbling doofus in one moment, but I had prepared myself for that.

I know eventually the glow will come back, but there's only a small yet significant window of opportunity to turn my daughter's face cherry red just by grabbing her hand and skipping through her school's halls. Eventually, she'll realize once again that having a dad around is pretty cool, but until then she'll just have to put up with me.

It's a traditional family value and I'm a traditional guy. My parents embarrassed me, and their parents embarrassed them, and so forth and so on. My mom still gleefully tells my tales of youthful indiscretion and bad judgment much to my chagrin, but I suppose she's earned that right. Now I have too, whether my oldest daughter agrees or not.

She'll get her chance when she's a mom, but until then I'm going to have some fun whether I'm King of the World or a bumbling doofus.