I love you, Jon Deal. Only my good friends have the honor and privilege of being openly mocked on my blog.
Heather Armstrong didn't ask me to write a guest post while she's on vacation. She didn't offer me Hooters French fries either. I'm sure the writers she actually DID invite to write for her are, you know, actual writers. In fact, I don't even actually know Heather. Unless you count that one time she told me right to my face that she thought I would be old, fat and bald. She obviously had me mistaken for someone else.
But if I did know her and if she had asked me, I would probably write some kind of lame advice about parenting daughters. And it would go something like this.
Growing up I only had brothers. This put me at a significant disadvantage when it came to just about everything important. Unless you count knocking each others' teeth out during Japanese typhoons among important life-skills. So, having no other experience with girls, I was easily deceived by the likes of Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen and Lucy Maud Montgomery. I was tricked into thinking that daughters would be either be one-dimensional people, driven only by social-status and the need to be married to wealthy, handsome, men of status as quickly as humanly possible or precocious scamps on a relentless pantsuit-wearing pursuit to gain a foothold in the mens' club of big publishing. With red hair.
Having daughters is no such thing at all. Daughters, as it turns out, are very much like regular people. My best advice is to treat them as such. Treat them respect and candor and then stand back and never, ever, ever doubt their ability to do anything.
I also though girls would somehow have a knack to be instinctively clean and proper and dainty. Wrong. I've learned to never for a second think that boys of the corner on dirt, destruction, mayhem and stink. Have you ever been on a road trip to Disneyland with only girls? Or driven a car-load of girls home from a dance recital? Or held a plastic bag out the door of an RV during a tornado storm along the side of the highway in Iowa so your daughter can poop in it? I have.
So what does this all mean? Hell, I don't know. I'm just winging it over here. All I know is that any time someone asks me if we're going to try to have a son my answer is, "No. Having only daughters is just fine with me." Every parent should be so lucky.
Filed under - Family | MiscI couldn't agree more...girls rock. BTW-dooce didn't ask me to guest post either...I was kinda hoping you'd put in a good word for me, but apparently that wouldn't have helped...lol
Love what you've learned about girls from "women's" fiction. How about some Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson Lessons for Life with Daughters?
Speaking of guest posters on Dooce, I read the one up today, and am feeling really stoopid that I don't get the joke on her bonus tip.
Please help.
This is in response to this, I think.
That masthead was made specifically for Erin Kotecki Vest who kept referring to me as "Fiddley Gnome" on a videocast once. I corrected her a little more sharply than I intended. We had a good laugh about it, then I posted this.
A proper pronunciation (and what the word means, as I intended it) can be found here
As a dad-to-be, I have to ask if you are implying that only daughters are like regular people and perhaps sons are another beast altogether? I'm concerned as I'm really hoping that my child will be a regular person no matter the gender. So now based on your blog I'm just really hoping for a girl. A normal, regular girl... hopefully with my sense of humour (That's Canadian for 'humor').
And oh yeah, Dooce didn't ask me to guest post either even though I totally talked to her on the seawall when she was visiting Vancouver. I guess it would have helped if I had told her my name. Or my blog's name. Or something besides 'OMIGOD, YOU'RE DOOCE! I LOVE YOUR BLOG. AND HEY, YOUR HUSBAND'S HAIR IS WAY MORE NORMAL THAN I EXPECTED.'
Okay, I believe you when you say you're happy with all girls because when I pushed out my fourth and they said it's a boy, I saw the disappointment in my husband's eyes. He says he just saw a fourth little girl trailing behind our three for the whole nine months and he was fine with it. I say try again, but your wife needs to get a yeast infection right before you conceive. (Don't shower for a week and eat lots of sugar ((her, not you)).) I swear Monistat gave us a boy. I haven't started the medical studies due to funding issues, but feel free to try it anyway. And thanks for sort of Filching. Well, you didn't quite Filch but signing Mr. Linky was nice just the same!
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Apparently I will never live down that photo.
Lovely.