My daughter is trying to kill me. Not with knives, explosives, poisoning, or a sleazy hit-man, but with a single question. Not just any question like, “Why did you have long hair and tight pants in high school?” or “Why does math make you cry?” or “Why do farts stink and why are they always funny?”

No this was a question that I had figured was a few years off yet. Something that I knew would eventually come up, but secretly hoped it wouldn’t, at least until my wife moves back home.

Sierra was sitting on the couch watching one of our favorite shows, “The Simpson’s”, and when a commercial came on she asked me a question. Most of the time “commercial time” questions are pretty basic, painless, and easy to answer. This one was different. This one made me wince inside, made my insides panic and jump around like, well like Homer. Not the philosopher, the other Homer, Homer J. Simpson.

She said, “Dad how old do I have to be before I can have a boyfriend?” As the number 35 floated though my panic stricken brain I said pleadingly, “I thought you didn’t like boys?” Oh, please say you still don’t like boys; its okay not to like boys, there really is nothing about boys to like. “Well” she says, “There is this one boy that I kind of like.”

This might be a good time to inform her that we are moving in the next hour to someplace far away from this boy that she “kind of likes” and we will be back when she’s 35 to continue this conversation. Until then we’ll find a nice “boyless” town and live in peace with no more of this nonsense about kind of liking boys.

The only answer I could come up with under these duress circumstances was, “Not for awhile.” Is that vague enough? Could be in a few minutes could be in a few decades. I just wasn’t comfortable setting a reachable number for her, a number that would give her hope that it would be okay to like boys someday soon and have, of all things, a boyfriend. If hope ever need to be dashed this was an opportune time and place.

So dash I did. I dashed to the phone to call my wife for some help, some insight, some hope for me to cling to, and above all a number. My wife thought my first impulse of 35 might be a bit excessive so I bid and bargained for a compromise of 32. My wife’s number was painfully lower, half of my second bid actually. Sixteen.

Sixteen! Good Lord that’s only about four years eight months and sixteen days away. That’s all the time I have to terrify every boy in town to the point that they tremble and wet themselves in my presents. Trembling and wetting can’t be an attractive sight for a girl. Hopefully it’s enough to keep the “kind of like’s” in the “don’t like” group for a few more years.

Let’s see what do I need to get started… a big mean dog, a beard, no more showers, a weapons permit, a knife collection, a lengthy arrest record, Chuck Norris as my faithful sidekick, and the ability to never, ever sleep.

Let the trembling and wetting begin.