/dev/zero

A while back my brother posted about a recent Luann comic strip.
Today I was working in the photo lab at school on an portrait assignment. Another student, in another photo 1 class, glanced at my latest attempt at a print as it slid out of the print drier and exclaimed “Oh, that’s a good one! Is that your daughter?”
<sigh>

Christy, the lovely young lady in the photo, is one of my fellow photo 1 students. You can probably imagine how the rest of that conversation went.
That’s the second time in less than a month I’ve been accused of being the father of a college age woman.

I walked into another room of the photo lab and asked Laura, the head lab tech “Hey Laura, how old would you guess I am?”
“Hmmm. About the same age as me.”
I raised an eyebrow. It’s one thing to ask a lady how old she thinks you are. I wasn’t about to ask her how old she was.
“Thirty-eight.” she clarified.
That’s it. I officially give up on ever having any chance of dating any of my fellow students.

While visiting Martin in Ft. Lauderdale over spring break, I happened to be sitting in a Johnny Rockets with some of Martin’s friends having dinner. I was explaining something about Martin to my dinner companions, in which the term “poly amory” was used.
While leaving the restaurant, a man who had been sitting in the next booth approached me and asked if he could speak to me for a minute. He said something about “(my) daughter” and “pro-am dance”. Thinking I had misheard and I was about to be proselytized to by some ultra-conservative Christian on the subject of poly-amory, I became guarded and asked him to repeat himself. (I think my actual words were “Huh?” Short and to the point. Yeah, that’s me.) He tried again “You said your daughter is a pro-am dance teacher, didn’t you?”
(confused) “My daughter?”
(Pointing to one of my dinner companions as they waited a polite distance away) “Your daughter. Isn’t she your daughter?”
“Uh, no. Sorry.” And I moved on.
Danielle, 5 months pregnant, had just gotten married the previous Saturday. Her husband was standing right next to her. At that point I had known these people for perhaps 45 minutes.
For the record: I’m 32. A little young to be a grandfather yet.