My Daughter is Scary.

Last week, I received this message from my friend Patrick, on Facebook:

I've never met your daughter but she terrifies me, she's more motivated and ambitious than I ever was. Hell, she's probably smarter than me too

So, naturally, I laughed and made a witty retort about how sometimes she scares me a little, too:

[She] just corrected me, when I posited "when you think of the solar system, you tend to 

envision the planets in a line all the time, and then they just knocked off Pluto, what the 

hell," and she said "yeah, but the planets couldn't all be in a line, because then the Earth 

wouldn't get sun and we would all die."

If it helps, she scares me sometimes, too. Hahahaha.

Dahlia is terrifying sometimes.

I was kidding, but only marginally. I'm not afraid of her ability to absorb a ridiculous amount of information, on some irrational basis, like, she'll morph into some evil genius bent on creating a fascist dictatorship. But I am sometimes afraid that she's going to be so steadfast in her decisions that she will stop questioning the validity of her own opinions. How often will she ask "could I be wrong about this?" Will she grow up to be one of those know-it-all people who are sad recipients of a large dose of the Dunning-Kruger Effect? Will her illusory "rightness," when called into question be met with copious rage and a how-DARE-you volatility? Is it possible that her refusal to be proven wrong culminate in grievous bodily harm, or worse?! I hope not!

My wish for her is that she'll be able to logically and soundly meet opposition with maturity, stand on her own two feet, not be nerve-wracked and insecure, but also able to admit when she's just plain wrong. She's only six now, and being headstrong is a quintessentially six-year-old trait, however, I can't help but wonder how much smartassery she'll take with her into adulthood. Hopefully not as much as her Mother. ;) 

I've been known to be a smartass even with a powdered donut.

My husband fell in love with this smartass, years ago.

I should look on the bright side: she's teaching herself Spanish with Rosetta Stone, tearing through books, schooling drunk teenagers on the origins of the Earth, trying like hell to assert her independence through learning how to cook and perform other menial tasks of living, and she's basically hilarious. So everything should fall into place. I hope!