I asked my teenaged daughter to do something. She glared (not maliciously, but very emphatically) at me, repeatedly jabbing finger on the open book on her lap, “I’m reading.”

On the one hand, that’s not the way to react to your father. On the other hand…it’s a good book, and based on how many pages it looks like she has left, I’m not sure I’d want to close it to do a silly daily chore, either.

That’s not true. I know I wouldn’t have wanted to, and probably wouldn’t have. Sure, one of the bonuses of being a parent is getting to hold obnoxious double-standards, but, when it’s one that hits this close to home. That’s pretty hard.

So I just let her read. It was the only call I could live with.

She reads another page or two, “I’m trying to stop these people from being idiots here.” Because if you read intensely enough, you can change the behavior of characters in a 13-year old novel, I guess.*

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* Actually, I don’t know…maybe she can. That’d be cool.