Dear Roger: Monkey Training With A Rolled Up Newspaper

Rog, I think I may have had more of an influence on my daughter than I should have had. I would like to take full credit for her being a genius, but hell, that came from out of left field and hit me like a freight train. She is still revealing bits and pieces of the depths of her brilliance, such as walking out into the living room with her Irish Penny Whistle that she has been messing around with in her spare time and telling me, "Listen to this!" She put a piece of sheet music up on the wall in front of her and very intently looking at it, she stood there and played,"When the Saints Go Marching In". Apparently she can read music. Chance just looked at her, picked up his guitar, went to his room and slammed the door. He fights battles with bar chords on a daily basis, but claims reading music is not something that comes easy to him, and for his baby sister to have it as a natural talent seems to be a slap in the face. She also walks around plinking on her ukulele and playing the songs from,"Avatar" the cartoon. Its enough to give her brother a complex. But when it comes to relating to others, that is her weakness.

My daughter is very direct and a little blunt about her opinion on things and I am trying to teach her the fine Southern art of the gentle put down or scold without being rude. I think she needs to learn this pretty damn quick because last night when we were watching a concert her favorite boy put on to celebrate the upcoming release of his new album, she said something that I was shocked to hear her say. He does this thing with his lip, I dont know why he does it other than hes a boy, hes young and some dumbass girl or person probably told him he needed to to something to stand out. It doesn't look very good, in fact it messes up what is normally a stunning smile, but I tend to overlook it, kinda like to overlook a pimple or a bit of unshaven beard, but she didn't. He did that face a few times when pictures were being taken and she got really annoyed. "Why does he do that with his face?" she asked me looking like ever the annoyed young fangirl. I told her that I didn't know other than the fact he is a boy and boys often do odd and incomprehensible things. " Well, I dont like it and he needs to stop it. I want to tweet him to stop it before he messes up his face or something. Someone should whack him with a rolled up newspaper when he does it to stop him." I reminded her that he is not a cat scratching up the furniture and that he is probably getting thousands of tweets and she is not the boss of him so he probably wouldn't listen. She got annoyed with me then. "Why do boys have to be so ridiculous?" I was trying really hard not to laugh at this point. She was talking about ridiculous and silly in regards to a young man who she had seen in a pink dress. She is very forgiving of his silliness and I do not know what set her off last night other than she doesn't like that lip thing and I created a monster when I let her compose my 20k tweet.

She comes to me at least once a day with an idea for a tweet or a composition she wants on the internet. She in inordinately proud of her videos that I have put on youtube and she came to me today and asked about having her own webpage. I asked her what she would put on it and she told me that she would of course put her writing and songs and such on it. Most of her songs are about her favorite boy, his band, the songs and such and she is quite the fan, but she is not one of those screaming, chase after them, they can do no wrong, kind of fan girls. She watches and evaluates and judges and has very clear opinions about what she likes and doesn't like. Its pretty amusing.

The rolled up newspaper threat is not an empty one, she wields it quite often around here and her brother and I are quite often the recipients of it. Just today she came storming out of my room, curls flying all about, face alight with indignation as she stomped her foot at us and said,"DO YOU MIND NOT BICKERING CONSTANTLY?! I AM SICK AND YOU ARE DISTURBING JACKSON!" she shook her paper at us and turned back into my room and slammed the door. I blamed her brother. But she is quite the scary handful and her brother and I kept our bickering down to a minimum after that. I am taking her to see her boy in August, and she is very excited about it, in fact she is looking forward to talking to him again and that is what worries me. She WILL say something. She will throw out some $5 words and freak everyone out and then she will flat tell him to cut it out with the snarly thing with his lip in her oddly blunt way unless I can get her trained before then. I have to teach her Southernisms like,"Honey, you are as darlin as a speckled pup in a lil red wagon, bless your heart" and all those other things that are backhanded end runs around something you know is gonna sting, but maybe just a little less than a rolled up newspaper wielded by a 3ft tall fangirl.I am guarding my twitter from her because she already has proven she knows how to compose a tweet, and she is computer literate and very adept at figuring things out, so better safe then sorry and I will work on her training in manners and civility before August rolls around.