Before Cora enters high school, I want to start taking her on dates. By the time a classmate first asks her out, I’ll have been dating her for years.
I doubt that she’ll think of our father/daughter outings as practice dates, but that’s how I’ll view them. I’m going to try my best to model the sorts of dates that I hope she has for herself, and to model the sorts of behavior I want her to expect from a gentleman. I want to find out what’s on her mind and get to know her better. I want to be charming. I want to get her used to the polite respect that she deserves in the hopes that she’ll come to expect it from others.
Sometimes the thought of letting Cora go off with some boy that I don’t know bothers me. But the best way of forestalling any disaster, besides threatening to put his teeth in his stomach, is to prepare Cora with the real thing, so that she can recognize a counterfeit. It raises the bar a notch for those boys when they have to talk to her and engage her interest, and can’t get away with just a cheeseburger and some necking. I mean, come on, dude! I could have a better time with my dad!
Someday her social calendar may be quite full, and it’ll be an effort to squeeze me into her schedule for a dinner together, or for a cup of coffee in the evening. I hope she makes the effort. And one day the roles may be reversed, and Cora will be breaking her dad out of the old folks home for an afternoon together. And she’ll want to know what’s on my mind, and she’ll try to get to know me better, and she’ll be charming, and she’ll give a silly old man the respect she wants him to get from others.