by Mark Hebert

I suppose it’s every father’s worst nightmare. Some little punk, sporting a head full of greasy hair, wearing a leather jacket and driving a slick little motorcycle comes knocking on the front door asking for my daughter’s hand.

Back-up Fonzi, I’ll stomp a mudhole in your ass.

Last week my wife was required to chaperone a dance at the elementary school she works at and since she had to be there – and because she carries my nuts in her purse – my nearly five-year-old daughter and I decided to attend with her.

My daughter – who knew she was going to the dance for a week prior to the shindig – thought that she was Cinderella going to her first ball and she couldn’t wait to get there. Me, well I would have rather taking a cheese grater and swiped it across a forehead a couple thousand times, but being that I’m a loving husband and father (and a glutton for punishment) I washed my ass, combed my hair and put on a clean shirt for the event.

When we arrived the party was already underway. About 60 pre-teen hoofers were cutting a rug to WE Will Rock You and my daughter – being a Queen fan – hooked-up with a couple of my wife’s female students and proceeded to twist and shout without a care in the world for the next half-hour. Everything was going fine, my daughter was having a good time, my wife was happy and I left the cheese grater in my back pocket.

Then, tragedy struck.

A little eight-year-old rodent – who I’ll call “Soon to be pulling my foot out of his ass” or, Johnny Rotten for short – was dancing with my princess, both of my little girl’s hands resting in his slimly little paws.

“Ah, that’s so cute,” my wife said to one of her fellow female chaperones, before turning to look at me. “Mark, why is there steam shooting out of your ears?”
I watched as my daughter and J. Rotten grooved to some God awful county twang and remembered back to the first little thug that had courted my daughter.

The event took place last summer as the wife, daughter and I went swimming at a nearby lake when the temperatures in the area had hit 100. We were tooling around, having a great time, until a five-word sentence ended the bliss.

“I’m going to kiss you,” a four-year-old monster shouted as he ran toward my daughter.

“The hell you are, Satan’s little Spawn,” I shouted back (the gasps from others at the beach were deafening, but a few fathers that were there with their daughters shook their heads in support as I glanced across their faces.)

“Tucker, don’t kiss anyone,” the little boy’s father shouted, looking at me with an expression on his mug that said “face it, pops, sooner or later the boys are going to come calling.”

“Not on my watch, Mister,” my expression countered. “Unless you want to go home wearing your son’s tail as a hat, you’d better corral your little monster.”

Spawn chased my little girl around for awhile, the two giggling like, well, children, and no kiss was ever planted (and no ass-hat was ever given.)

It was with this memory in mind that I strolled across the floor as my daughter’s first dance ended, patted her on the head, asked if she was having fun and then shooed her away from her little Prince Charming before grabbing the Prince by the collar of his shirt.

“You treat her good or I’ll carve your ears from your head with a rusty butter knife,” I informed him.

He shook his head “yes” and ran from the dance as if his carriage would soon be turning into a pumpkin.

Though the crisis was averted, the reality is that sometime soon my daughter will be a teenager and that she will start to like boys more than she likes her father. It’s a reality that I have to deal with – unless, God willing, she decides that she likes girls better – and I remembered what a horny little cuss I’d been in my adolescent days (the thought still sends shivers up my spine.)

My daughter is the most important thing in my life, but the fact is that someday some little Casanova is going to sweep her off her feet and I won’t be the most important man in her life anymore. It’s going to be tough to deal with, and I’m not sure how I will do so, but until that day comes, I’ll be sitting here polishing my 12-gauge Mossberg.

“Bring it on, Chachi. Daddy’s got lots of buckshot.”