My daughter sleeps early, I don’t. My wife and I would usually tuck her to sleep, and then I’d leave the room to go about my business…
Yesterday, when I was about to leave the room,

Regine: “Daddy, are you going to sleep now, together with me?”

Me: “No, I’m not.”

Regine: “Why, daddy?”

Me: “Because I still have something to do.”

Regine: “Do what?”

Me: “Something.”

Regine: “Why?”

Me: “Because I have to.”

She has already reached the dreaded ‘why’ age, and would ask ‘why’ until the cure for cancer is found. But I discovered an effective solution yesterday – if you reply her ‘why’ question with the same answer as the original one, her mind would be tricked to go into a perpetual loop and call off the intention to ask more ‘whys’.

She’s about to turn 4 in a few days, and she makes everything better for me.

When I was tucking my daughter to sleep,

Regine : “Daddy, I want to keep a pet.”

Me : “What kind of pet do you want?”

Regine : “A goldfish.”

Me : “If you want a pet, you’ll have to be responsible for it.”

Regine : “I am going to name it ‘Ham’”

Me : “But I don’t like the idea of anyone keeping a pet. Think about it, instead of swimming inside a bowl, the fish would be happier swimming in a river or lake somewhere, where it gets to play with its friends and relatives, right?”

That was my cheap shot to avert the idea of having to buy her a goldfish.

Regine : [nods]

Me : “So which do you think is better? Keep that goldfish in a bowl as a pet? Or let it swim freely outside and being happy with other fishes?”

Regine : “Keep as a pet.”

Me : [legs up in the air]

I thought I was in for a good start there. You know, infusing the thought about animal cruelty and shit, so that I don’t have to worry about no pets. But it didn’t turn out quite right. You should have seen her face when she gave me that last reply. It was that ‘who gives a crap about a goddamn goldfish’ kind of expression… Mein gott in himmel!

The world according to… my 3.5 year old daughter:

- The kindergarten she’s attending is not called a kindergarten. It’s called a ‘school’ because she would never attend a kindergarten.

- The day she becomes a ‘grown up’ is the day she knows how to use the porcelain bowl at the toilet in the mall. She should be
about 10 years old then.

- If she ever misbehaves when she becomes a grown up, a hyena will materialize out of nowhere and eat her dress.

- When her father dies (that’s me), she’d have to inconveniently drive the black family car to the zoo herself. She should be about 10 years old by then.

- All animals have stinking backside. Ergo, if your backside stinks, you must be an animal.

- The singular for ‘horse’ is ‘whore’. (explanation here)

- Old people should keep short and curly hair, they shouldn’t ever grow long straight hair. Vice versa (young people shouldn’t keep curly hair)

- Every man should know how to sing Foreigner’s ‘Waiting for A Girl Like You’ because it is a VERY nice song.

- Coffee is for men. Children and women should not drink coffee.

- She’s not obliged to go for a bath if she is not sweating.

I accidentally spilled a few drops of milk on the bed. My wife Emily jokingly reprimanded me in front of my 3 year old daughter Regine – that if the stain were to attract ants to the bed, she would make me sleep on the stain with the ants. This got Regine pretty animated and asked my wife to let me sleep on the stain right away (without waiting for the ants to come).

I decided to pull her legs

Me : “I’d love to sleep on the bed by myself… it makes my back feel better…”

I’ve been having a bad back lately

Regine : “Are you sure?”

Me : “Oh, yes. Definitely.”

Regine : “You like dirty things?”

She was referring to the milk stain. She must have found it strange that I liked the idea of sleeping on the stain.

Me : “What? No. I said I like to sleep on the bed by myself.”

With a look of utter disgust, my daughter then said this to me…

Regine : “You are a naughty man.”

I think she wanted to use the adjective ‘gross’ or ‘disgusting’, but she conveniently substituted it as ‘naughty’ instead. And before I could come up with a retort, she added in another adjective to illustrate her contempt of me further…

Regine : “You are a naughty, fat, man.”

That was like, another kick in the crotch after getting a finishing blow. Emily was laughing like a jackass when I was reeling in from the shock. The things a kid could say nowadays… sheesh.

In case you couldn’t tell the language of a child, the word ‘fat’ in their dictionary means, something as bad as being a total douche bag. It is by no means an allusion that the person the child is referring to – is physically doughy or has an out-of-scale BMI. Or fat. No I’m not. (she must have mistaken the six packs as ‘fat’. Or my massive pecs). Leave me alone.

I was hanging out in the family convenient store at Emily’s hometown last weekend, when my 3 year old daughter Regine spotted a contraption near where we sat, pointed at it and said,

“Daddy! I want to play!”

It was a telephone.

“No Regine. That’s a telephone, not a toy.”

My daughter then gave me this puzzled look. I wasn’t suspecting anything, but merely explained further,

“You see, someone might want to use it to call somebody. If you’re playing with it, then they won’t be able to do that.”

She then asked me in a rather surprised tone “Daddy, this is a handphone?”

She actually meant ‘is that like a cellphone?’. You see, I didn’t realize that all along, we do not have a telephone in our home. All we have are cellphones, and a cordless phone when she was barely 2 years old. The closest thing to a phone she has ever seen was a colorful toy telephone with wheels. And even that does not come with an RJ11 cable attached to its base (only a cord to the handset). So she naturally thought that the (real) telephone she saw, was a toy. Now, who would have thought that such a thing could happen? My 3 year old daughter not knowing what a goddamn telephone is. Had to explain to her that the damn thing works like a cellphone, except that it is more inconvenient, and ridiculously huge…

I didn’t know that a telephone is already an obsolete thing from the past…

Come think of it, there are so many ‘everyday items’ from my childhood that my daughter has not seen before. A couple that I can think of right now…

Damn, I can’t believe that my generation is obsoleting.