My fingers had done this thing.  They’d typed to the father of a pre-teen daughter that I enjoyed him and wanted to ‘see’ more of him.  And now, I couldn’t very well tell this Daddy that it was all a mistake; that my fingers had mutinied against my well-laid plans to not date a Daddy. So, I decided to do the honorable thing: make the most of it and date this man who was almost perfect- hardworking, ambitious, sensitive and funny.

Nigel* was nicely taken aback by my desire to see more of him.  He could not believe his luck- I actually wanted to see more of him. He too was very interested in me and wanted to learn more about me.  So...we began taking care to fashion our online time so that we were on at the same time and could become more acquainted. He would tell me about his day at work and the latest weird thing done by one of his employees.  I would tell him about mine. He would recite some funny joke he happened to remember. Sometimes, if either of us could not be at our laptop, we’d have the longest conversations via text messages.

Nigel was sensible about the entire thing. Sure, he liked me- very much.   Sure, time and time again, he stroked my ego wonderfully when he raved on and on about how attractive he found me to be.  Sure, he was already talking about the day when we were no longer just online daters and would meet face to face.  But, he wasn’t gushing about how much he was in love with me.  And, this endeared him to me all the more. It was nice to move as slowly as we were.  I felt as if I was truly learning about this man- his family, his likes, his dislikes, the things he found funny and those things that he didn’t.

I wasn’t over the fact that there was a pre-teen daughter. Nor did I ever forget that she existed.  I could not. He reminded me of her existence ever so often. He had scanned and sent me one picture of them together- he and his daughter.  It was a good picture- a supportive and doting father flanked by a young and very pretty smiling girl. She didn’t live with him, but visited often as per whatever arrangement was laid out sometime ago.  And when we weren’t talking about politics, our day at work, his company, our pets or how attractive we found each other, he’d talk about her.

He’d joke about his plan to maim or possibly kill any young man who was brave enough to be ‘fishin’ around at this early stage.  He’d josh about just how spoilt his pre-teen daughter was as he outlined his plan to one day ‘straighten her out’ and wean her from her very privileged life.  From time to time, he even talked about the warm reception he expected her to give me if I were to show up in his hometown as ‘his woman’.

Whenever he talked about his daughter, this uneasy feeling would begin patrolling my brain and I would begin to ponder anew if I could really do this.  It didn’t help any that his face would light up whenever he talked about his little wretch or shared the latest plan he had devised to deal with some future boyfriend of hers.  

And, it especially didn’t help when one day, he, by pure accident, revealed he had lied about one aspect of this daughter of his. Yes, she did exist. The picture he’d shown me of him with the young girl was very real. But... it was also quite old. His 9-year-old  was really no pre-teen. She was very much a teenager- 15 going on 16….

*Name has been changed. 

Coming next Saturday: The New Picture