"My Job Is To Keep Her Off The Stripper Pole" - Chris Rock

For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to have a daughter. Now that mine is getting past the cute toddler years and entering the child years, the novelty is beginning to wear off. Don't get me wrong, I still adore the little lady and would do anything for her. But dang yo, it be tough to raise a girl these days. And apparently I am not alone in that line of thinking. My best friend, also the parent of a daughter, sent me an article about how girls as young as six (SIX!!) are concerned about being "sexy". What. The. Fuck. Seriously?? I didn't even know the word 'sexy' at six years old. These are the kinda statistics that make me want to buy the highest room in the tallest tower and lock up my girl until she's too old to be considered sexy (what is that nowadays? Like 70? Plastic surgery is the devil.). In the little poll at the bottom of the article, 75% of people said it was harder to raise a girl these days. Fantastic. So glad I've told anyone who would listen that I'd like another girl, essentially pre-ordering another one or two with the man upstairs (I wonder how one can cancel an order like that). Yes, people can say they want this or that and never get it but girls run in my family...damn it all.
Next month my daughter will start a pre-school program and be gone for half the day. Her mother and I have already had several conversations about how we have no idea what we'll do with the free time we're going to have. And it's only gonna get worse from there. Next thing you know, she'll be in 1st grade and be gone all day. She'll choose who she hangs out with and we won't be able to control what she'll overhear on the playground or be told by her new friends. She will come home with questions that neither of us will want, or even know how, to answer. She will become more independent and no longer require my help to do things. She'll enter grade school and start to say, "Yeah, I don't know who that weirdo is" when her friends ask who the big goof following her around like a lost puppy is. She will enter high school. She will start to date (*shudder*). She'll leave the nest and, possibly, go to college. Hopefully she'll find her passion and pursue it wholeheartedly. She'll get married to some fool and, perhaps eventually, make me a grandfather. A GRANDFATHER! *sigh* I don't even wanna think about it.
Of course, being that she's only 4 right now, there are 14 more years between her and adulthood. Fourteen years of mother-daughter battles and father-daughter battles and who knows what else. The challenge is getting her from here to there without anything crazy or illegal (cuz after all, she is her father's daughter) happening. I can't even fathom that someday I'll have to sound like my own parental figures and say, "You're not going out the door wearing that, go change!". Nor can I imagine having to explain to her why boys are evil. Given that her mouth is already in full effect, I am 100% sure I will have to say, "Don't talk to your mother that way.". And I may just shoot myself if I ever utter the words, 'young' and 'lady' in the same sentence. Good god, that's gonna make me feel old. Hell, I already feel old. Why can't they stay cute and little and needy forever?