We’ll call it our DeSextroyer.

My dad plays golf and runs his own independent insurance agency, Church & Associates. He’s proud of the fact that he’s kept the same hair pick and same pair of hard contacts for over twenty years. For twenty-one years, he’s used the same Simplicity Buccaneer riding mower to cut the lawn. When it breaks down, he gets it fixed.

My dad always showed up at my ball games and took me on fishing trips, just the two of us. Now that I’m older and live two and a half hours away, he calls me to see how I’m doing. I find it really easy to talk to him about my business, my finances, my girlfriend, my church, and my community. Most of the time, he even asks before he offers advice.

If you asked me to describe my dad in one word, I would say that he is “dependable.”

He does what he says he’s going to do. He follows through. He’s a man of his word.

Yet, just when I think I have him pegged, he’ll come out of left field with something “hip and cool,” as he likes to say. We were taking a walk around the neighborhood, and he was telling me about a recent talk given by the youth minister at the church where my dad is an elder. The youth minister was asked to educate the parents about a new trend among teenagers:

“Sexting.”

Apparently, horny kids will take pictures of themselves naked and deliver these photos via text message to their boyfriends and girlfriends. Something tells me that more often than not the boyfriends are the ones requesting such pictures.

Some of the images end up on the internet. Imagine that.

Duh. Hel-loooo. The guy who persuades his girlfriend to send him 2.0 megapixels of her breasts is the same sleazeball who will post the shot online.

“No, baby, listen, I’m different. Please send the picture. It will be our little secret. I’m not going to run off and tell all my friends. You can trust me.”

Yeah right, pal. Guys who say “You can trust me” are the last ones you should trust. They’re like the people who say, “I like deep conversation,” who wouldn’t know a deep conversation if they ran over one with their Jeeps.

A trustworthy man, a man with class, a gentleman, wouldn’t ask for the nude photo in the first place. If your sixteen-year-old son cannot exercise self-control now, he’ll soon be the predator slipping a rufi into some sorority girl’s drink and justifying his actions by saying, “She didn’t say no!” Right, because she was semi-conscious and trying not to black out. We’d all appreciate it if you ran for public office in thirty years.

Sexting.

My dad’s occasional knowledge of pop culture never ceases to amaze me. Even if he doesn’t know how to send a text message, he is “hip and cool.” I’m not in the least afraid to become more like him. When I hear myself saying things like, “Hold your horses!” or “Let’s get the show on the road,” I smile.

If only we could both be like McGyver and use his favorite hair pick, his Braun electric razor, the blade from his Simplicity riding mower, and parts from his Daiwa fishing reel to make a ray gun that would castrate every sexting jerk in the universe.

We’ll call it our DeSextroyer. To express their everlasting gratitude, parents of sexting-liberated teenagers would sing songs about us and submit entries to UrbanDictonary.com and Wikipedia. We will be crowned with laurel and receive the Nobel Peace prize.

Comments Closed

One Comment