My daughter and I have your average father-teenage daughter relationship.

She has total disdain for me.

How did I manage to achieve this lofty distinction? I tried to be fair. That must be it. In other words, weak.

I let my daughter get away with exchanges I wouldn’t have dared say to my own father. So I can be proud of the fact that violence and threats and ugliness and hypocritical double standards are not part of our household, like it was in mine when I was a kid.

She never listens to any advice I give her. I can justify this in the knowledge that if I gave her advice and it turned out to be wrong, I would be made to look foolish. However, the sheer size of her dismissal of my intellect, such as it is, is so immense as to be truly astonishing.

For example, she only recently started driving our car when she got her license. That’s terrifying enough. Her very first solo drive without an adult she wanted to make after dark to a friend’s house, and I forbade it. I insisted she make her first drive alone in daylight.

I got told how I’m illogical, unfair, selfish, insulting, stupid (she used a nicer word that means the same thing), negative, hypocritical, redundant, out of date, out of line, crossed the line, petty, autocratic, and irrational.

In other words, I’m a parent.

I think you should become a practicing masochist if you want to experience parenthood. It isn’t enough that you worry yourself into an early grave and less hair over your kid. You get told you’re everything from a moron to uninvolved.

Of those two, I highly resent being called uninvolved.

Case in point. She wants to take the car and drive one of her friends to a play rehearsal. She’s not allowed by law to drive another teenager (you have to wait a year for that privilege). Her mother tells her she can’t, that it’s illegal.

I say it’s illegal and she can’t, and I get told by my daughter, this doesn’t involve you. Sure, I’m only your father. Remember me? I’m that guy who lives in the back room.
I’m not involved in the car? Hmmm! Let’s see. The car is mine, I purchased it from a friend (what’s really amazing is when my daughter makes the point that it’s my wife’s money alone that buys everything in the house).

Where were we? Oh yes, the car. I found it and bought it partly with my wife’s (and my) money. The insurance on the car and the liability for it in case something happens is also mine.

If my daughter drives the other kid and gets hit and the other kid gets hurt, I can be sued by the other kid’s parents right down to my jockey shorts.
I’m not involved?

I imagine an article on the front page in our local newspaper under the heading, “Dead-Beat Dad Let Girls Drive Before Smash-up.” My neighbors, who already have a low opinion of me, are reading the article. Not only does it call me irresponsible and negligent, IT’S A LOUSY PHOTO OF ME!

Not involved?

Something tells me this is a bit of a stretch.

I’m not involved. But I do need to become a masochist. If I can find a way to enjoy being told I’m nothing, that I know nothing despite fifty-eight years of living. If I can find a way to enjoy this, I could walk up and say, “I need some abuse. Could you lay it on me?”

In that case, she wouldn’t do it, just to spite me.

I look at supposedly stronger men like my father, and Ward Cleaver from “Leave it to Beaver.” Men whose opinions were valued. Then, I look at myself. I must be a weak, sniveling, craven worm.

I found a way to deal with it. Rather than running myself down or becoming a pervert by enjoying pain, I’ve come to realize, I’m a brilliant writer, a rare artist who is not really cut out for mundane parenthood. This puts me above it.

My wife tells me, you’re too late. It (parenthood) happened anyway.

My wife tells me this is just a phase my daughter is going through and that eventually she’ll respect me. If I live long enough. This makes it easier too.

In fairness, my daughter really does love and value me. The other day she asked me what the word “recalcitrant” means. If I was a village idiot, stumbling backwards in manure, would she ask me such a thing?

Like most parents, I love my daughter with all my heart. She is a very talented, hard-working student and has a good and kind heart (despite putting me in my imagined place).

I think there are two evils in a household, over-strict (domineering), like my house when I was a kid, and under-strict, permissive, which can cause its own problems. I’ll tell you what, though, we’ve never crushed her spirit by dysfunctional yelling and pushing and slapping her into line.

She has more confidence because of it. I’m proud of that.

Parenting, as any parent knows, is a bittersweet experience. Like life. Given the choice, I would never miss being a parent. But don’t tell my daughter.

She’ll claim I don’t know what I’m talking about.

You can read more of Sammon’s humorous, ranting articles at: www.sammonsays.com