Being a Parent Is Awesome

My sixteen-year-old is spending her spring break in Nashville with her softball team, playing in the first of what will be another season full of life-consuming out-of-town tournaments. Since it's such a big trip, and gaggles of stay-at-home moms are tagging along for the week, I pretty much get a free pass until next weekend, when I'll make the drive up to catch the last day or two of games. In other words, the teen is pretty much on her own. All week. (This isn’t a bad thing. I trust the kid. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I don’t trust the kid, but I trust the kid. You know what I mean? No. You probably don’t. But if you have young kids, you’ll understand soon enough.)

The team played a one-day, five-game warmup tournament yesterday, so they have their whole day free today before the big, weeklong tourney cranks up Monday morning. I last spoke to my daughter around bedtime last night, when she was already lamenting what she assumed would be a Sunday wasted at some suburban Nashville mall, watching a busload of rich-girl teammates try on shoes and spritz each other with expensive perfume. So when she texted me this morning saying they were having breakfast and then heading to the Adventure Science Center, I could tell she was pumped. It’s a rare sixteen-year-old private school girl who prefers the nerdy gadgetry of a science museum to a 1000th trip to Hollister or Abercrombie, but then, this is a rare kid. I’m lucky that way.

Anyway, about an hour later she sent me another text, this one in the form of a three-line dialogue. Below are her exact, unedited (except for the coach's name) words.

Coach Riley: "Don't break anything in the science museum."

Me: "It's impossible to create or destroy matter."

Everyone: (Silence)

I am fucking floored.

It's all here, people. The lightning wit. The “I’m surrounded by idiots” realization. The unspoken but implied *sigh* of quiet, artistic isolation. All laid beautifully bare by the Xacto-knife precision with which she recounts the story. Further, there’s an understanding of the subject matter, without which, the joke wouldn’t even be possible.

In a word, it’s brilliant. And not only did her audience fail to get it, they failed to get it on like five levels.

Now, as self-anointed class clown my daughter is no stranger to the blank-stare-inducing wisecrack. She regularly tells me stories about how she made some joke in class that no one laughed at. Then she’ll tell me the joke. Fucking hilarious. Every time. So this raises a really interesting thought. It’s not just that her audience failed to get it. It's that she knew they’d fail to get it, and went ahead with it anyway. To instantly call-up "It's impossible to create or destroy matter" in that particular situation takes serious chops. But to actually say it out loud, as a sophomore on the varsity team, surrounded by mostly juniors, seniors, coaches and parents, knowing full well you’re gonna hear crickets? That takes balls.

Which I guess leads me to something of an unintended point.

Yes, it’s frustrating, maddening, and even torturous when your wit is wasted on the witless. But sometimes there’s a great comfort in knowing you’re on your own.

So while the joke was lost on my daughter’s audience, it’s clear from her text that the lesson wasn’t lost on her. And that’s what makes me proud. That despite all my faults as a parent, and there are many, I’ve still somehow managed to teach my kid the most important lesson I could. Relish your different-ness, and celebrate the fact that you aren’t like most people. Because most people are really, really fucking lame.