Jimmy.
Now, I'm not foolish enough to think that Jimmy is her first boyfriend. Jimmy is just the first one that she's actually told me about.
It happened like this. I took her to pick up her friend Alyssa on Friday. They were going to the Chief's game on Saturday with some other folks. On the way back I heard GTO ask Alyssa what time she was leaving on Sunday. I didn't really follow the conversation but me ears perked up when I heard "hanging out with me and Jimmy".
"Me and Jimmy". Yeah.
But I didn't say anything, I just sort of filed that away.
Today she texted me. She was pissed off at her mom. Not exactly breaking news. The reason for this particular instance of her pissedoffedness was the fact that her mother, who had previously agreed to drive GTO to Blue Springs and pick up Jimmy on Sunday, was now backing out because she had "plans". She wanted to know if I could take her.
Summoning all of the casual innocence and passive, dismissive curiosity I could muster, I asked. "Who's Jimmy?"
"Jimmy's my boyfriend."
Dum, Dum, DUMMMMM.
And there it was.
I took the news in stride and focused on what I considered to be the two most important points:
1. She felt confident enough in our father/daughter relationship to know that she could tell me she had a boyfriend and know that I wasn't going to freak the fuck out.
2. She was actually going to let us meet each other. That means she knew I could handle meeting him and she didn't view me as some embarrassment that she needed to hide from her boyfriend.
I told her I could probably squeeze the excursion into my busy vacation schedule. Just before we ended the call, she said "WAIT. He has ear gauges. Don't say a word!" I agreed to keep my mouth shut, even though she knows I think that shit is STUPID.
As things turned out, I didn't get to meet him. He turns 16 tomorrow and his mom was taking him out for his birthday, so there would be no hanging out today.
When she told me this, I asked her to send me a picture of him, which she did.
This isn't him, but the ear gauges are about the same.
He has holes in his earlobes about the size of a quarter.
Now, I'm not crazy about this, but it's OK. Other than the facial mutilation, he's not a bad looking guy. And GTO tells me he's an atheist, like us, and that makes me happy. Makes me think he might be intelligent despite the visual evidence to the contrary.
I'd much rather see her hook up with an atheist hipster with holes in his ears than some fundamentalist football quarterback who wants her to "get right with God" and save her soul.
I take solace in the fact that this won't last. One of them will break the other one's heart and she will move on to the next boyfriend who will be different from the last boyfriend. This is how it works. It's a winnowing process. Eventually she will discover what she wants and doesn't want and, I hope, she will find the man (or woman) who will make her happy. Which is my only concern.
In the meantime, I'm just nurturing the "you can talk to me about anything" aspect of the father/daughter relationship because I know that will become increasingly important in the coming years.
With honest and open communication, anything is possible. Between parents and children, between boyfriends and girlfriends, between husbands and wives, between life partners and life partners, between business's and customers, between politicians of opposing parties, and between nations who seek each other's demise. Nothing is as powerful or important as communication.
If you aren't communicating, you are powerless and inconsequential.
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