Before You Learn to Rock, You Learn to Roller-skate

Since school started, Matilda has been going to a school-sponsored skating party once a month. Mom takes her and a friend and I stay at home with Gertrude doing things that would normally get us in trouble if mom found out we were doing them. (Seriously, I think it’s fine that we play with Crazy Glue. Despite the rumors, it DOES come off. With acetone. So what if we smell like a flammable material? It adds to our mystique.)

When they returned from the first skating party, Matilda’s friend stayed the night. As soon as they walked through the door, they ran to her bedroom to confab about the evening’s events.

“What happened,” I asked mom.

“You don’t want to know. Trust me.”

But I did want to know. Desperately. What was my nine year old daughter up to that required a closed-door conference? I mean, she’s nine. Didn’t they talk about Polly Pocket and My Little Pony or something? Surely that’s all they talked about.

I pressed my wife for details.

“You don’t want to know,” She said. I think she was baiting me. “Fine, but you can’t tell them that I told you. They both like the same boy. And he was there, winning tickets for them at the video games.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you right. There was a boy there? A nice boy who wasn’t trying to show off or anything, right? He was just a generous, kind young man who enjoyed spending time with the girls, right?”

“If that will allow you to keep your fragile grasp of your own alternate reality, then yes. But they like his hair.”

Shortly thereafter I was in the basement in the fetal position.

But this weekend, it got worse. Friday night they went to the party while Gertrude and I innocently ate kettle korn. Little did I know the world was changing.

They came home. The girls went into their closed door conference. Mom debriefed me. They skated for a while, then they met with “Boy 1” who they gave money to win them prizes (and the little bastard did just that). Mom sat knitting and overheard a gaggle of boys discussing who they liked. “I like Matilda,” said one.

It gets worse. Later, she said, over the plangent tones of a sappy teen love song, the roller-DJ announced, “This one goes out to Matilda, from AJ.”

And now my life, as I knew it, is over. I’ve begun barricading the door, stocking up on shotgun shells, training the dog to attack adolescent boys and practicing my “I don’t know if that dude’s sane” look. They may try to date my daughter, but they’ll have to make it by me first.

I’m using the family in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre as my role models.

So, this one goes out to Matilda from D.A.D.

And this one goes out to the boys.