An Urban Legend Grows: My Daughter "Stood" for Obama

While I was conducting an event at the Honors House tonight, I heard from a colleague that Miss Teen RSI had stood up during a high school class and said that it was time to listen to President Obama's speech. I was also told that the teacher had told her to sit down and that the class wasn't going to hear the speech.

Yes, I had a brave daughter who was willing to stand up to authority in the name of all that was good and true.

But it turned out to be an urban legend.

When I got home, the daughter in question said that she had sort of stood to make her hand visible but that she forgot what the teacher said and that it hadn't been any kind of put down or anything like that anyway.

All very mundane.

It turned out that about half of the high school teachers didn't show Obama's speech in their classes.

Not much of a surprise.

High school teachers are pretty conservative--especially in a Bible-belt area like this.

I'm just glad that they're not teaching the "Answers in Genesis" line in the science classes.

Death Struggle Near the Bottom of the Height Pool

As regular readers of Red State Impressions probably know, the beautiful Miss Teen RSI has been severely height-challenged all her life. When she was two and three years old, I would take her in for annual check-ups and I could see that her height wasn't even making the low end of the growth charts. I was always touched that kind-hearted nurses would fudge the numbers to make me feel better. But my daughter was short, short, short.

And it wasn't all the cigarettes we had her smoke as a baby either. Miss Teen just has short genes. Mrs. RSI is only 5' 2 1/2" inches and Grandma Marlene is barely 5'2." Once when Miss Teen was about seven, I explained to Miss Teen why she was doomed to a Randy Newman life by having Mrs. RSI and Grandma Marlene stand together.

But denial was strong. Miss Teen still felt like she was going to have the big growth spurt that would get her up to 5'5."

Fortunately for Miss Teen, her best friend E-Teen is even shorter than she is. Because Miss Teen hit puberty relatively early, she had a little growth spurt that got her up to 5'0." This was the height of her dad's ambitions for Miss Teen and I'll always been grateful to the gods of genetics for letting Miss Teen get to five feet. But now that E-Teen has hit puberty herself, she's been catching up and looked like she was getting ahead when she wore the right shoes and had the right hair-style.

But yesterday, Miss Teen and E-Teen had the short girls version of the shoot-out at the OK corral when they stepped on the scales with their other friends watching. The competition was tough and the results had to be verified several times. Personally, I'm just glad that blood wasn't spilled.

However, it turns out that Miss Teen is still one "silly centimeter" taller than her rival. Congratulations to Miss Teen. She always had it in her.

The Unethical Parent, No. 1--"Zit-Starter" Gum

Mrs. RSI and I used to joke a lot about writing a book entitled The Unethical Parent about the necessarily shady business of raising human children.

We told a lot of fairy tale whoppers when our two daughters were little and had fun speculating on the necessarily unethical dimension of parenting in general.

Eventually, the chatter about The Unethical Parent passed and we moved onto other ways to have fun around the house.

But last night I had an idea.

Miss Teen and I were at the check-out counter at the local Walmart in Morehead, KY when she reached for some gum.

Pretty much like usual.

But I didn't make my usual decision about whether she had been generally cooperative enough that I would pay for the gum.

Instead, I said "ah, I see you're getting the "Zitstarter" brand again.

Well, that threw her for a loop and, after a moment's hesitation, Miss Teen put her down her super-sugar gum and reached for the sugar-free stuff.

I also paid for it.

A minor victory for evil parenting.

But a victory all the same.