My daughter owns me

I was working on my blog the other day when my daughter materialized.

"You need to take a picture of me and put it on your blog, daddy," she said.

"A picture of you doing what?"

"Holding a box of Crayons, daddy! That would be cool, daddy! You need to take that photo, daddy!"

"I don't think so, Brenda. You see..."

"Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy!"

So, here's a photo of my seven-year-old daughter holding a box of Crayons. I hope you're happy now, Brenda.

Yes, there's a point to all of this. My daughter owns me and all of you men out there who will one day raise a daughter are in for the same kind of fun.

Here's the thing about daughters -- they're miniature versions of wives. And wives learn how to manipulate their husbands about a minute after they meet them. That skill is passed on to daughters. Fighting against it does no good.

And I did fight against it, indeed. When we found out my wife was pregnant with a girl, I said we were going to be strict with this one. Yes, we had been too soft on our son and things were going to change with our daughter.

I changed that little girl's first diaper and she had already won the battle against her old man by then. She'd been in the world for less than an hour and I was already beaten. I never stood a chance. That's just the way it goes. So, give up, fathers. You can't win.

I've attached two more pictures to further illustrate my point. In the first one, you'll see my daughter asking me to pick her up and hang her upside down by her ankles. Just look at the expression on my face -- I'm trying to tell her no, but it's obvious I'm going to fail (and that may be why my wife was laughing when she was taking that picture).

The next picture, of course, is one of me holding my daughter upside down.

There's just no winning with that one. My only sibling is a brother, so I was terribly unprepared to raise a daughter.

I'll get a bit of revenge when she's a teenager and starts dating, of course. I have a plan. A masterful plan. A wonderful plan. I figure on buying off some boy with the hot video game console at the time and asking him to spread a story.

I want that kid to tell everyone who will listen that he came over to our house to see my daughter and claim that "her father answered the door. He had a gun and he looked at me ... with crazy eye."

The real kicker there, of course, is the crazy eye. Any person who looks at you with crazy eye may, indeed, be insane and who knows what a man with crazy eye will do?

For the boys that aren't intimidated by tales of my kid's insane father, I do have a shotgun. And I'll make sure to make a big show out of cleaning it whenever one of those little brats shows up in my house. Maybe I should get a more vicious looking shotgun -- is a double-barrel or a pump more intimidating?

Of course, there's always the chance my daughter will talk me out of doing even that. No man will ever be good enough for her, however. I'm sure of that much at least.