Early Development

I just read an article that says boys are going through puberty as early as age nine now. This is very disturbing to me. Not only does that shorten the time she has in public school before I lock her up in that tower, but now I have to figure out where I'm gonna get the money to up my payments so that I can get the guard dragon out of layaway in time.

Seriously, I don't know what to say. I'm not really surprised. Little girls have been sprouting grown-up features ahead of schedule for years. I don't know about anybody else, but part two of my "Where Babies Come From" talk came from the behavioral development specialists at the barber shop. "Yo man seriously, check them IDs! These girls be looking grown as shit and they don't even tell you that they're like fourteen. But you'll find out when them cops come knocking on your door. They call that shit rape and when you get to lockup, them niggas don't care that you thought she was grown. You gonna have a hell of a time in jail, man. Trust me, man. I know!"

You get a lot of good advice in the barbershop. Perhaps it was just a tad premature considering that I was only about ten at the time, but that brings the conversation full circle. They thought I was a teenager because I started growing a mustache when I was ten. Some people think that early puberty is caused by hormones in food. When I think back to all of the fatback, potted meat and scrapple sandwiches that my grandmother gave me growing up, I'm inclined to think that there may be some merit to it. I'm gonna go ahead assume that I started puberty sometime during my delivery in the hospital.

I think the best strategy for me is to just expect that every little boy my daughter encounters is a potential predator. And I'm talking the first day of Kindergarten. They're like lion cubs. They're cute, but there's a reason you don't take one home...they grow up. This isn't to say that I'm going to shelter her. I met tooooooo many of them in college. Being sheltered is like getting a bachelors degree in Harlot-ology.

There's the other extreme, which is to be hands off and let her go out and experience life. You know, let her make her own mistakes in hopes that she'll learn from them. I can't even say that with a straight face. Yeah, that one (being my child's friend) is almost certainly going to make me the youngest grandfather at the kindergarten graduation. No I need something in the middle.

I don't know what it is yet, but I have some ideas that I'm working with. It's a mixture of being a strong male role model, teaching her the "Guy Playbook" without making her hate men altogether, carefully choosing when to look the other way so she can do something mildy stupid and learn from it and making her feel comfortable talking to us about serious stuff all while exercising every legal means of spreading the word around the school system that her daddy is CRAZY. That last part might be helped if I show up to the school randomly dressed as Braveheart or the lead slave from Amistad.