I owed Rachel a birthday; I was flat on my back with the flu on hers, and felt worse about that than I felt awful for being sick. I think it mattered less to her: she was hitting the magical 14, which meant I had to allow her to date, because, after all, I had allowed Alex to start dating. She went out with the kid named Cheese once (with Char’s dad as chaperone, which I still think is funny as hell) but since then it’s been one thing after another (part of it her own fault) and she hasn’t been out with him since.
When she approached me the other day, I assumed it was going to be to ask me to drive her and Gouda-boy to a movie or McDonald’s or something on Friday. I was fully prepared to say yes, as long as it was someplace acceptable. I hate the idea of her dating, but I’m bending to the inevitable, and it helps that this kid’s parents are at least as protective as we are. For the most part, he’s not going out without supervision, either. They’re satisfied that I insist on driving them where they want to go, and they’re fine with Alex and Stephanie tagging along. So like it or not, when she asked I was going to say yes.
But, she wasn’t asking for a ride; my daughter asked me out on a date. She wanted to collect on her birthday, when I promised to make it up to her. This meant I had to ditch the wife, but fortunately she had other plans anyway.
Now, my daughter’s idea of a good time is shopping. She loves the damned mall, and I knew that’s where we were headed. I hate the damned mall, but I hate shopping in general, and she knows it. She tried reaching for some sort of compromise (though I wasn’t going to balk; this was her date, if she wanted to walk the damned mall, I was going to do it and not whine once) and suggested a movie (at the mall theater) and dinner (at the mall food court.)
My daughter is a cheap date, it seems. She wanted to see Gnomeo and Juliet (something she’d never get Alex or Cheese to go to, I think) but one of us (sorry) misread the movie listing and we got there 20 minutes after it started. So what to do?
Walk the damned mall, then have dinner, and then catch a later show.
I did not mind the whole shopping experience as much as I thought I would. Rachel, for whatever reason, is a window shopper; wandering around looking at crap gives her a bigger thrill than actually buying anything, which did surprise me. At first I thought she was resisting the call of the $150 shoes because she thought it would come out of her own wallet, but even after I told her I'd spend $X on whatever the hell she wanted, she still just shopped without getting anything.
Her logic, which I appreciate, is that just because it’s not her money, that doesn’t mean she wants to waste it. Those shoes were “cute” but not "long term cute", whatever that means. Those shoes wouldn’t match anything and she needs to cull through her closet and get rid of a few old outfits before adding to it. She pointed out things Kevin would like, things Alex would like, and I realized that half the time when she does go shopping with Char or with friends, what she comes home with is typically for one of her brothers. She doesn’t wait for special occasions; she just likes to give gifts.
After an hour and a half, I actually wanted her to want something; hell, I was itching to crack open my wallet and get her whatever the hell she wanted, but we headed for the food court with her just about laughing at me because I “just don’t get it.”
No, but then I’m not a 14 year old girl and if I need something from the mall, I do anything I can to get Char to go get it for me. I almost understand it, though, when she and Char head for the mall together and come home with nothing. Rachel, without her brothers around, in a setting that’s not so focused on her, yet is focused on her, opens up. She talks. I heard more about her friends, what she’s doing in school, what interests her and what bothers her, even more about Cheese than I care to know, than I typically get in two weeks of conversation at home. Char knows how to connect to each of the kids in ways that work best; with Rachel, it’s wandering around the mall, supposedly looking at “not long term cute” shoes.
When we stopped at the food court she was approached by a cluster of girls her age (they walk in clusters, right? It seems rude to say they walk in herds) who wanted to know if she had decided if she was going out for track or softball, and when she said she still wasn’t sure, they tried hard to talk her into track. I sat back and just listened; I didn’t know she was considering school sports at all, and I certainly had no idea she had blown the P.E. teacher away with her time on the quarter mile run and had been told to seriously consider it.
After her friends left I asked her about it. Was she leaning towards one over the other, or did she not want to commit because she didn’t want to join a team at all? She does want to join a team but she doesn’t want to play softball—she’d rather play baseball, but not on the school team because she likes those boys and doesn’t want to show them up (yes, I laughed)—but she’s not sure she’d really be any good on the track team. She can jog, but she doesn’t like the short, hard runs. So, what’s the point?
No one has ever told her about cross country track, I guess. They’ve been focusing on sprints and the quarter mile in P.E. and it didn’t occur to her that on a track team, there are positions for long distance runners. But, she hasn’t trained for that. The first tryouts (for next year’s 9th grade team) are in a couple of weeks, is it even possible to get ready for that?
Rachel is in good shape; while she’s not training in TKD every day anymore, she still trains and she still works out. I don’t think she’ll have a problem even if the tryouts were tomorrow. I said that if she was remotely interested, she needed to go for it. If she wants help training over the next couple of weeks, I can help with that. Running is one thing I do well enough to be of use to her.
What I didn’t realize, though, was that in saying that, I obligated myself to go back into the bowels of the mall to get running shoes. Long term cute running shoes. But at least they weren’t $150.
And the movie—cute. Not something I’d go to on my own, but perfect for an evening out with my daughter.
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