Will She Choose Well?

“Daddy, am I pretty?”
She’s standing in front of the mirror in PJs and her mother’s heels, about four sizes too big. A pink tiara tops the tangled mess of flaxen curls.
“You’re the fairest of them all, princess,” I assure her. Pleased with the verdict, she blows me a kiss Miss Universe-style and struts to the breakfast table for pancakes. I feel a tug at my heartstrings. How long before she struts, just as confidently, out of the house and to her first date?
I dread the day she’ll introduce me to some guy in that breathy, googly-eyed way of a smitten kitten. Even the most reasonable, liberal and laid-back father turns into a shotgun-toting overbearing tyrant at the thought of his daughter dating. Her boyfriend can be a seminary student who rescues puppies and reads to the blind when he’s not busy finding the cure for cancer, but to me he will still be a crude horndog moron. No guy will ever be good enough for her, period.
Unless… Unless, just like her, he thinks pancakes go better with ketchup, not syrup. Unless he believes she is prettiest when she sticks out the tip of her tongue, concentrating on something. Unless he is there with a hug when she falls, with a cheer when she soars and with a Hershey bar for everything in between.
Just like her Dad.