Quit Acting Like Your Father

My first marriage was over so fast that I didn't get a chance to change my name on everything. I'm talking Britney Spears fast. I mean swift, like had we bought in bulk, we'd have still had some of the stuff left by the time we got divorced. We were married only long enough to get pregnant and have the baby. We signed divorce papers when our daughter was two months old. She has zero recollection of us ever being together and while she did spend time with her father as a child, the lion's share of time was spent with me. Given these facts, imagine my surprise when she started to show traits exactly like her father. 

Let me paint a picture for you. I grew up with my granny. My stern, you'd better follow the rules or pay the costs, Granny.  What I'm getting at is, I was reared to do the right thing and not rock the boat. While my first husband was probably raised the same way, by the time he got to college, his middle name officially became, "Buck the system" and he challenged everything and everyone. By the time I met him years later, this was fully ingrained in his personality and while at one point I must have found it intriguing, when it showed up in our kid, after having no real interaction with her dad, it was the exact opposite of intriguing. It was downright maddening. Once she got to high school and emerged from her glasses wearing, shy little shell, the calls from school started coming hot and heavy. I'd see her school counselor's number come across my work phone and I'd take a deep breath and steel myself to hear her crime du jour. Every call made me feel like I was in trouble. 
 
What had she done NOW???
 
There was a situation I'll never forget. She had just moved from middle school to high school and her new grade came with a new dismissal time. She wasn't yet used to the new time, (so she said) and rushed to her locker to retrieve her phone and turn it back on. Her teacher saw her and told her to put the phone back. She would not. The teacher asked her again. The child refused. The teacher threatened to call me. The same child expressed that the teacher should do what she felt best (always with the smart shit). The teacher then found herself on the phone with an embarrassed, rule-following mama who had evidently given birth to Malcolm X. The teacher said, "Had she just apologized and put the phone back, I wouldn't even be calling you." *sigh*
 
About an hour later, I see the girl, who is carefree and breezy. Not carrying a fraction of the stress I'm carrying. I rush up to her, verbal guns a-blazing, screeching, "What is wrong with you? Have you lost your mind? Why would you be disrespectful like that?? You cannot act like this! You know better! Why didn't you just apologize???" With the calmness of a serial killer she says, "I couldn't apologize." I scream, WHY NOT??" Ms. Buck the System, Jr. says, "Because I wasn't sorry." I just stood there. It never occurred to me that you had to be sorry to actually say it. I had spent my life saying it whether I was sorry or not. Now obviously, this WAS a time when it was warranted and she SHOULD have been sorry but the knucklehead was not. I was like, "Damn." That was all I had, "Damn." 
 
I called her father and recounted the entire scenario. When I landed at her remark about being unable to apologize since she was not actually sorry, his chuckle oozed with pride," Heh heh heh, that's my "Fight the Power" baby right there. Against my better judgment, I chuckled too and vowed to give the school his number as the primary one to call. Genes are a Mutha.
 
Here is "Fight the Power” baby, which her father named her due to her fist in this picture.