Father-daughter relationships can survive without football

Having a daughter has been enlightening. 

I never thought I could lose a moral argument to an eight-year-old, but it’s possible. Now she’s fourteen and I struggle even harder to hold the moral high ground. 

“You’re going to have a second glass of wine?” she said the other day, looking at me with raised eyebrows.  

To relent at that point would mean relinquishing all parental authority. I had to have the second glass, although the look on my wife’s face made me momentarily reconsider. 

It’s not that I don’t offer my daughter sage advice, but quite frankly, it’s often quite trivial. Fatherly proverbs like, “Don’t sing at the table” or “Stop doing so much homework” or “Who cares what your teacher thinks!” are not exactly life-enhancing words of wisdom. 

I understand, things can change pretty quickly in the teenage years. But for now, I see a maturity that didn’t exist when I was her age. 

I don’t know exactly what develops slower and later in the brain, but boys seem to lack it in fully developed form until they’re at least 25. Teenage boys literally die because of poor development in this part of the brain. A notable news story brought this to light a few years ago, when two teenage boys were killed after tobogganing down a closed bobsled track in Calgary.  

Interestingly, it’s this lack of brain in boys that sometimes appeals to girls, or at least to some of them. They may be enthralled at how fearless boys can be; how utterly ignorant of the consequences of their actions.  

It’s when the relationships begin that boys come to see the disadvantages of an under-developed brain. That’s when an understanding of consequences becomes so much more important. You may think you know what you did wrong, but trust me, you’re only guessing. 

For this reason, girls often date older boys in high school. As a young male, I understood this completely. Don’t even try dating girls your own age, unless you enjoy getting burned. You need someone who at least thinks you have it all together, and when you’re in grade 12 and they’re in grade 10, this illusion can work for a time. 

As a fully matured 25-year-old, I could get away with marrying a slightly more mature woman, which also has advantages. As a man, the last thing you want is for your spouse to die before you. This may be over-generalizing, but a man’s chances of surviving on his own are dismally low. There’s only so much canned food one can eat and only so much sports on TV. 

I failed to hand off the football gene

            Speaking of football, it’s the one thing I can’t get my daughter interested in (sigh). How I’d love her to follow with anticipation the drama of the NFL draft; to yell at the TV with me each time a game is on; to be my drinking buddy after a tough loss (that would have to wait until she’s legal drinking age). Instead, she’s ambivalent. Even worse, she mocks my team’s star quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. So what if he’s a narcissistic anti-vaxxer – he’s the league’s MVP! 

Fortunately, our interests collide in other nerdy areas like Star Trek, video games and political musicals. We share an obsession with things over long periods of time – like listening to Hamilton’s 47-song playlist over and over again, and making Star Trek references every couple hours.

Sure, we may disagree on whether Rodgers is redeemed for his vaccination deceptions by his superior quarterback play, but at least we concur that Jean-Luc Picard is the best captain ever to command the Starship Enterprise. 

For a father-daughter relationship, that’s something.