A daughter's call prompts father to fret

My 6-year-old daughter was playing at a friend’s house last week when she called me at work on my cell phone, which is unusual.

She said, “Daddy—“

Stop the tape.

My daughter normally addresses me as “Dad.” I tried for years to get my kids to call me “poppa” because I thought it sounded more affectionate than the dull, monosyllabic “dad,” and it conjured up a warm, Old World feel as if I were Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” When my children were learning to speak, I always referred to myself as “poppa,” but, alas, it didn’t catch on and I got stuck with “dad.”

Unless, I have learned, my little daughter wants something. Then, suddenly, I’m “daddy.”

Very clever of her, I admit, but I’m wise to her machinations so when she called me “daddy” to open the conversation last week, I went on high alert.

Something was up.

Okay, roll the tape.

“Daddy,” she said, “pleeease –“

Stop the tape.

I have concluded that the number of “Es” my daughter uses when she says please are directly proportionate to the odds that I will deny her request. They are also directly proportionate to how badly my daughter wants to do something, which is usually exponentially compounded by how much she believes I don’t want her to do it.

For example, “Pleeeeeease may I get on the roof with you to hang Christmas lights?”

The very idea that in no way will I allow her to get on the roof with me to hang Christmas lights heightens her desire to get on the roof with me to hang Christmas lights. That accounts for three Es. The other three Es come from her almost certainty that my answer will be “uh, no.”

Is that clear? Maybe a formula will help.

If E equals the number of Es in please, O equals odds of denial, D equals my daughter’s desire, and NA equals the Not Allowed quotient, the formula would look something like this:

E=O=DxNA^x

So with three Es in her please when she called, I further knew something was up.

“Daddy,” she said, “pleeease—“

Stop the tape.

That background noise, I hear? It’s giggling. Two of my daughter’s friends are giggling, and I can picture them huddled around the phone. Giggling friends in the background never denotes anything good.

I braced myself, which involved holding my breath.

Roll it.

“Daddy,” she said, “pleeease can I paint my fingernails?”

I exhaled.

Was that all? Clearly, my worry was misplaced. The girls were just having a little game of dress-up. There’s no harm in that. I came this close to blurting, “Sure, hon. Of course you can,” when I caught myself. Rash replies I have learned can lead to unfortunate misunderstandings.

“You said I could paint my fingernails.”

“But I didn’t mean with superglue!”

Perhaps a little more probing was called for.

“You mean with fingernail polish?” I asked. “And just your fingernails? You’re not going to paint your nose or elbows or anything?”

She assured me it was with fingernail polish and just her fingernails.

“Well, then, sure,” I said.

And she said thanks and bye and hung up.

I immediately started worrying again because the other thing I’ve learned is that the speed with which my daughter concludes a conversation is directly proportionate to the degree to which she believes she got away with something.

It turned out I had nothing to worry about because she and her friends had only painted their fingernails. On the other hand, I clearly had a lot to worry about.

One day, I fear, that call is going to come not from a 6-year-old friend‘s house but from a tattoo parlor or from some place where you can get a nose pierce or buy a too-tight pair of shorts or from a party where I can hear loud music in the background (which is way worse than giggling). The conversation will begin much the same way, I’m sure.

“Daddy, pleeease . . .”

I worry about that. I worry a lot about that.

But then I think, “Hey, at least she called. That’s a good sign. If you insist on worrying, maybe you should worry not about when she calls, but when she doesn’t.”

And that to me sounds like a good approach because when it comes down to it, no matter what she wants to do, I most definitely want her to call.

Pleeeeeeeese.