The Battle at Blue Jean Pass

Over the years, I, like any other self-respecting divorced man, have managed to develop and nurture the requisite amount of enmity and disdain for my ex-wife. This malevolence however, has its limits. For the last two years I have been unable to develop any malicious momentum because every year, right about this time, my ex wife takes a bullet for me. I was watching my regular morning news show today when they showed a clip of 16 year-old Miley Cyrus writhing all around a pole as if she were the "pre-breast-reduction" version of Demi Moore in Striptease. I thought to myself how sad and disgusting it was that a mere child ... a virtual baby is in such a big hurry to become a sexual being. That was when it hit me as if I was some poor, unsuspecting teen character in a Friday the 13^th movie who had just opened the door that the audience implores them not to open. I gasped audibly and muttered to myself,

"Oh my God! School clothes."

That's right. It's time for the annual "Battle Between the Aisles". If you have a teenage daughter you know what I'm talking about and if you have daughters who are not yet teens ... be afraid, be very afraid. Every year about now, they come, condemned fathers trudging into the malls and Wal-Marts behind gleeful daughters. The daughters demonstrate either their lack of recall or of fear. Only one short year ago tears flowed and declarations of "I hate you" were heard across the retail aisles of the nation as daughters tried to wrangle approval for jeans that would make Paris Hilton blush. And yet they come, like salmon up the rivers, for the annual ritual of making their middle-aged fathers twist in the wind of discomfort that blows us between making our little girls happy and wanting to twist the neck off of the unsuspecting Wal-Mart stock boy who doesn't realize that it's your daughter that he is leering at.

This brings me to my ex-wife. Though we seem too be able too disagree on nearly any and everything beneath the sun, the one piece of common ground that we do share is with regards to the meaning of "appropriate" with regard to our daughters clothing selections. Two years ago, perhaps sensing that I was weakening, she offered to take the front lines in what I have come to refer to as "The Battle at Blue Jean Pass". I gleefully hand over as much money as my ex-wife tells me is required and wave from the safety of my front porch as she drives off to throw herself on the grenade. So you see, odium goes only so far. It is with heartfelt appreciation that I raise a glass to my ex-wife and despite whatever wrongs I felt were foisted upon me, I smile, and happily proclaim ...

"Here's to you, my lovely former wife. May you live long and prosper."