MyThreeDaughters

Bet you don’t think I can connect those three, in 400 words or less.
Driving to a birthday party yesterday morning with the three girls.
Fontaine mentions hearing her favorite song, “Sweet Home Alabama,” coming out of someone’s car.
Before I had chance to think, “Man, we have to move north of the Mason-Dixon line AND SOON,” Rosebud hit us with:
“I wish I lived in Sweet Home Alabama.”
(And, hey, who doesn’t want to live in a place where the skies are so blue, tell me true.)
Fontaine says, “Sweet Home Alabama” isn’t a place. Alabama is a state, do you know what a state is?
“No,” Rosebud says, what is a state?
OK, Fontaine continues, how about the United States, it’s a country, do you know what a country is?
“No.”
OK, how about a continent, like North America, the United States is part of North America…do you know what that is?
“No.”
This is now reminding me of a reporter I used to work with at the newspaper who maintained that an interview could be conducted merely by repeatedly asking the question, “Why is that?,” and a second reporter who said that while that might be true, the first reporter would eventually get his ass kicked. (I’m only at 208 words, so a little aside won’t hurt.)
OKaaaaaaay, Fontaine plods on, North America is a continent, and continents are big, giant chunks of land, and there are seven of them on the world. The world is where we live. Do you know — here it comes, Alabama — what the UNIVERSE is?
“No.”
I don’t know how far into outer space this explanation can go, so I blurt out: “How about God, do you know what GOD is?”
“YES!” Rosebud calls out with delight at finally knowing something. I know a song about God, and she starts singing.
Luckily, it wasn’t “Sweet Home Alabama.”
(313 words: God, The Universe, Lynard Skynard)

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There are times that having young kids gives you a chance to be young again. You can legitimately be 40-way-plus years old and walk along the edge of a street and play the walk-a-tightrope game along a curb, you can imitate silly voices and laugh at bodily sounds.
And my favorite thing: You have the perfect excuse to watch cartoons or stupid TV, and if I could just find reruns of old Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, the Coyote and Roadrunner I would be oh so delighted. Because, that’s no longer considered watching stupid TV: It’s BONDING WITH THE CHILDREN.
Then there are other times when your age thrown in your face. Like: Saturday morning, taking the girls to an old diner for breakfast – and if they ate something, a donut afterwards – and driving up to the ATM first. We’re in the VW van. A young woman on the corner, walking her dog, all the windows up, but all three girls at the same time make the sound that girls make when they think something is really cute: “Awwwwwwww-wah-awwwwww.”
I look over and see the woman and her dog and give her a big smile, because the “Awwwwwwwww” is so loud that I am sure she heard it. Then, I realize, well, the rear windows of the van are tinted and the young woman probably had no idea that I had anybody else in the car with me let alone three girls who saw her dog and went, “Awwwwwwww.”
I say to myself, but out loud, “Oh man, now that young woman probably thinks I was flirting with her.”
There is a slight pause in the car, and then Fontaine tries to make me feel better.
“Don’t worry, Dad, you’re way too old for that girl to think you were flirting with her.”
Again, Kelso, “That ‘70s Show,” BURNNNNN!
Oh, great, fantastic, so the young woman thinks I’m a creepy old, unshowered, unshaven, baseball-cap-wearing perv.
Cool. How soon do the predator reports appear online?

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