Lock Up Your Daughters: The Tower or Threat Approach

I was putting on my makeup this morning and listening to the radio, as is my usual routine, and heard the country song "Cleaning This Gun" by Rodney Atkins.  It's sung from the perspective of a father who is inviting a young man into his home who is getting ready to take the father's daughter out on a date.  It's a cute song and it got me to remembering one of the first times a young man came to OUR door to take out our daughter.  It really had seemed like only yesterday that she'd been just a bored, squirmy toddler.

I turned around and she was all legs and curls and playing dress-up and collecting My Little Ponies.  Boys were one of the last things on her mind.  That was fine by me.  I wasn't looking forward to her dating years. 

But time waits for no man (or mother) and soon she was a lovely young woman and young men were lined up.  The inevitable moment arrived when a gangly young fellow showed up at the door to take her out on a date.  My hubby showed remarkable restraint as he invited him in and spent some time talking to him before our daughter made her appearance.

As they walked to the door, he stepped aside to hold the door for her and let her through and as she walked out, I touched his arm to hold him back for a moment.  I whispered in his ear, "My husband is a lot nicer than I am.  If you do anything that you shouldn't with my daughter, I WILL kill you.  Do you understand?"    He looked a little green around the gills, nodded quickly and was out the door.

I was remembering all this as I listened to the song today.  I was thinking how there was a lot more I could have said.  I mean, I COULD have said, "I've been in the Army AND the Navy and you don't want to mess with my daughter because I know more ways to kill or maim a man than you can even imagine.  Have I made myself clear?"  Of course I would have never actually done anything, I don't think, but who knows?  Mothers can be pretty protective of their young.

Back to that song.....I was also thinking that my son better start thinking about this kind of situation now because that little Sweet Pea is going to grow up so fast it will make his head spin.  Since he's a pacifist, he can't very well be cleaning a gun when that first earnest young man shows up at his doorstep, but my boy's a writer.  Surely he can come up with some good one-liners.  And if he needs some help?  Hmmm, Nana, the Enforcer has a nice little ring to it, don't you think?