Talking to girls, when they happen to be your daughter

Since the hormone fairy waved her wand over my thirteen-year-old daughter Sparkly, there's been a lot of silences. Sullen ones. Distracted ones. Oh-I-left-my-ipod-on ones. Yet you can practically hear the hum of her thoughts. They just don't seem to want to come out.

Picture it: Sparkly looks just like me. Has my personality.  Should be simple, right? Just imagine what I would do, if I was a girl, and....yeah. Doesn't help. And unlike my son, Dusty—who will plop himself down on my lap and talk Legos all day long—I have to go seek out Sparkly. Find her in whatever thought-hole she might be at the time and try to coax her out. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it goes wrong.

Me: What'cha doing?
Sparkly: Making a fun quiz up.
Me: Want to try it on me?
Sparkly: If you saw a boy trying to pick up your girlfriend, would you A)....

This was not the conversation I wanted to be in. Hello, uncomfortable. And that's just it, isn't it? She's a woman and I'm a guy. In a sense, her archetypal guy. The one by which all others in her life will be measured. I didn't want to blow that responsibility. That's why I didn't want to answer the quiz. I was caught between the honest answer and the parent answer.

I'm still working out which is the better answer.