The Girl and the Dreaded Day

The girl that lives in our house turned 15 today. This has been a long dreaded day in my life.

I spent the better part of 13 years working with teens, and my experience with 15 year-old girls tended to be that they were “the worst.” For some reason the vast majority of the ones I encountered had the impression that the universe had a single focal point around which it revolved, and that focal point was them. They also had an excess of drama and a capacity to inflict vindictive emotional trauma that out did anything I ever saw a boy do.

Thankfully, the girl appears to have only a mild case of whatever it is that made humanity invent nunneries. She does have unpredictable emotional outbursts and can make more noise than any of her brothers. She doesn’t get into my science fiction obsessions as much as I would like, but she does enjoy fantastic fiction. And she can appreciate (and tolerate) a good scary story more than the boys do as well.

Most importantly, I haven’t yet been considered too embarrassing nor too much of a risk to have an “all access” pass to her daily stories and thoughts. But I can tell I may need to increase my efforts to keep things that way. Either that or find a way to lock her up and weaponize myself a lot more than I currently have. That, and I have to figure out a way to control the wifi around these parts a lot more!