As the father of a very soon to be teenage daughter, I can safely say that this is rapidly becoming the most challenging time I have yet experienced as a parent. I have noticed distinct changes in my daughter since she started going to grammar school last year, we often go to the cinema and last year it was Disney and cartoon based films, now this is being supplemented with the worst kind of movies imaginable, I’m not talking about things like Hostel or other gore flicks, in comparison these are tame, I am talking about movies made for and aimed at teenage girls.
I took her to see Journey to the Centre of the Earth in 3d a few weeks ago which she really enjoyed and I thought watchable, but two weeks later she asked to go see Wild Child, at the time I thought nothing of it, I was not prepared for the carnage that followed.
The film is about a spoilt Malibu barbie that is sent to boarding school in England where she learns all about true love and other cliched subjects, all delivered in glorious technicolor, when we walked into the cinema I was sure that other fathers present were looking at me with sorrow in their eyes as well as a look of abject terror for what was to come.
I spent most of the film with my mouth half open while silently praying to God to make it stop, at one point my daughter, who was laughing at all the crass humour and cooing at the romance and trendy outfits, looked around to see me sticking cocktail sticks in my eyes, it was irrelevant, she is becoming a teenager.
A week later she asked if we could do something with the sunny day, I had a flashback and started to suffer a panic attack as I recalled all the similar movies that were about to come out or had already, she then announced that she really wanted to go cycling, a reprieve.
As her father is the exclusive agent for Catrike recumbent trikes in the UK, she has by her own request a Catrike Trail, I ride an Expedition, over the last year she has not ridden that much due to starting a new school that is five minutes walk away and various other things, so I suggested we take an easy round trip of about 8 miles with a stop for lunch. I had bought her some running tights to cycle in which she objected to as she claims they make her legs look fat, but she wore them, I have been trying to talk her into clipless pedals and shoes but she had thus far resisted.
One of the things I was intent on was teaching her some roadcraft as earlier excursions had shown up some obvious dangers in the way she viewed other traffic, also in the past she would not in any way consider riding on the road at all other than to cross it. However it seems this has changed along with her ability to listen to advice on riding style, she took on the roadcraft and relished in me asking her questions about it, she rode on a couple of quiet roads as well as cycle lanes. She applied her new knowledge well.
Another notable change was her use of the gears on the trike and her glee of attaining high speed down hill, hitting 20-25 mph a couple of times. We rode along the river and had a huge lunch at a country park cafe before riding through a small nature reserve and then back into town and while she was tired at the end of it, she smiled all the way though it, even when she decided to ride up an embankment and turned the trike over, which led to an impromptu cable repair.
When we returned she declared that she wanted to cycle a lot more with me and that she wanted clipless pedals and shoes, so I picked her some shoes up this week and await Saturday to see if cycling is the order of the day or another teenage gore fest.
She has started talking about boys as well.
