Pride and Privilege

Last night, I took my daughter to Disneyland.  We spent more time on the road going to and from than we did actually in the park, but it’s a once-a-year thing, and something special we could do together.

See, it’s the Disney Family Christmas shindig this week, and because my sister and her husband both work for Disney, they invited us to go along.  

Naturally, on Sunday night before she went to bed, my daughter complained that she was coming down with a cold.  It’s something of a tradition that someone in our family experience some minor illness or discomfort whenever we go somewhere, and it was her turn.

So, I wasn’t surprised at all when she called from school around noon, her voice heavy with snot, asking if she could get a ride home.  I was crestfallen.  It was no fault of hers, but she’d put me into a bit of a bind: should I get her out of school early and cancel the Disneyland thing, or should I tell her to tough it out if she expected to go up to Anaheim with me?  I thought for a moment, then decided that she should come home, sleep for a couple hours, and then go with me to Disneyland, but only on the understanding that she’d have to go to school today.  

She agreed.

So, as I said, we had a terrific time at Disneyland.  We rode the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, ate a fantastic dinner, and in general, acted like pals.  I loved every second of it, in spite of the fact that every time I looked at her, I was also checking to make sure that she felt okay.  She was fine.

And then this morning, she knocked on my door to say that she really felt too sick to go to school.  I sort of expected it, even if I wasn’t happy about it.  “Okay, you can stay home, but be sure to pump fluids,” I said.  I didn’t fawn over her, or even check on her.  She’s a big kid, and a good one, and I’ve always trusted her to know when she’s not well enough to go to school.

Now, I know, some parents will insist that trusting my daughter this much isn’t healthy, and that she needs to be followed up on.  Ridden, if necessary.

Hogwash.

One of the things I’ve always done with both my daughters is to speak to them like adults who have earned my respect.  I started this while I counted my older daughter’s fingers and toes the first time, which would be roughly 6.23 nanoseconds after they finished cleaning her up and asked me to take her to her mom.  I’m not sure how much of the quality of our relationship I can attribute to this habit, but I will say that neither of my girls sass me nearly as much as they apparently do their mother, which is approximately a hundredth of how much other kids seem to sass their parents these days.  It’s a simple philosophy: treat the children with respect and they will grow up respecting themselves and other people.

As I always do when my daughter is home sick, I called her to see how she was feeling.  I did it to let her know that I was thinking of her, and that she was important enough to stop what I was doing…she knows how busy my job can be…and also to see if she needed me to bring her anything when I headed home.

Her cell phone was off.  This is not unusual, as she turns it off during the school day to avoid having it taken away, should someone call her during class, and she also keeps it turned off when she’s home, because she’s got her own land-line phone.

So, I called her land-line, and got her answering machine.  No big deal, she could be in the other room, so I talked mindlessly into her answering machine for a minute or so before it cut me off.

I figured that when she got the message, she’d call, and when she didn’t call, I assumed she’d be sleeping.

When I got home, she wasn’t there.  

It turned out that she’d gone to the mall for Christmas shopping with a friend.

I called the friend’s cell phone, and asked to speak to my daughter.  I was on the war path already.  She couldn’t explain why she’d gone to the mall, nor could she say how long she’d been there.  If I had been snarling angry before, I was now in another dimension.  The top of my head flew off, the rest of my skin fell in a heap around my ankles and I began channeling R. Lee Ermey’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.  I am not entirely sure that I did not scream, “What is your major malfunction, Numbnuts? Didn’t your mama and I give you enough attention when you were a child?” but I did shout “DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?” more than once.  

I was calm by the time she got home half an hour later.  I was no less angry.

She was very upset.  I sat her down and told her I was disappointed, mainly that she’d lied to me about how bad she felt that morning, and that she should have known that permission to stay home from school was not permission to go to the mall.

She said, “I didn’t think we’d be gone so long.  I thought I’d be home before you got home.”

That was the part that hurt.  She didn’t just lie, she put some thought into it.  She weighed the consequences of her actions.

I’m not looking forward to talking to her mother this evening, because I’ve never known her mother to go along with any decision of mine, and I suspect that I’ll have to endure a lecture about parenting skills.

Because she’s Dr. Bloody Spock.

This leads me to the lesson in all of this for me.  Lisa wrote about regrets recently, and though I fully agree with her, I do have one major regret this evening (and for a long time to come).

I regret that I am a single dad.  

I regret that I have to be the hardass and the nice guy, that I have to straddle the line between good cop and bad cop.  

And if I have ever taught my daughter that it’s okay to be dishonest as long as you don’t get caught, I regret that, too.