Something Happened

I can outfox my daughter easily just about every time.

(Even when I don't want to. I can't keep my mouth shut.) I don't know what else to do when we spar like that and she tries to show me she is as good as I am. (She isn't. Should I let her win?) She hurts me, and I hurt her; she strikes me, and I strike back. She likes to browbeat my wife and me into spending excessive sums of money on her for things that have not much value to her once she owns them (it is one method she has found of exercising power over us); I permit her to succeed, without resistance, comment, or complaint (it's a method I have found of outfoxing her. And it is easier for me in the long run to let these really rather negligible amounts of money go than to keep quarreling with her over them in a series of emotional discussions that might not be concluded otherwise. I win victories over her, I have found, by giving in to just about everything nettlesome she proposes). She thinks I am immature. It galls me to hear her say so (even when she says it with approval, when I am succeeding in making her laugh, it irks me to hear her tell me that I never fully grew up and that I am, in her opinion, still as playful and childish as a little boy. My boy is frequently distressed and offended when I try to make him and my daughter laugh in public, by singing, walking fu

My daughter is just a little girl, and I try to outfox her in argument. (I just can't help it.) I talk to her as I would to a grown-up, to Kagle, Green, Jane, or my wife, cleverly, cogently, glibly, bitingly. I react to her unpleasant moods as I would to some insulting adult my own age or older. I try to embarrass and defeat her in debate: I want to top her always when we trade taunts and wisecracks, and I usually succeed. (If I can't be fu

"She doesn't dislike you," my wife will say to me, when I go to her sometimes for help and advice. "She adores you. Can't you tell?"

"She never says she does."

"Neither do you."

"I don't adore me."

"You know what I mean. Why are you joking now if you really care?"

"She's always angry," I complain. "Even when she isn't really angry, she comes in and pretends she's angry and then she gets angry. She does that with you too."

"That's why she's so sensitive when you're angry with her or pay no attention to her or when you're even too busy to talk to her when she comes into your study to talk to you."

"She never really has anything she wants to talk to me about."

"She doesn't know what to say."

"To me?"

"She doesn't know what else to talk about that will interest you."

"Then why does she try?"

"She wants to impress you."

"She doesn't have to."

"Then why does she try? Your mind is always someplace else. You always act as though we're intruding and you wish you were someplace else. With me, too."

"Stop it, for now, will you? We aren't talking about you. Or I will wish I were someplace else."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that now."

"Yes, you did. Or you wouldn't have said it."

"Do you want to pick on me?"

"All she does is tell you she can't stand me, and all she does is come into my study to tell me she can't stand you and start a fight with me about one thing or another."

"She doesn't know what else to say to you."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"She's shy."

"With me?"

"That's why she goes into your study so often to interrupt you. She wants you to pay some attention to her and tell her she's pretty."

"She isn't so pretty when she says some of those things she does."

"Don't you think she's pretty anyway?"