The Twilight Zone

Now that our 14-year-old daughter is a high school teenager, I am doing my best to have a good relationship with her. I heard all the horror stories from experienced parents about teenaged daughters. If they’re right, I have little time before she will have nothing to do with me.

Sure, I spoil her and I usually take her side in disagreements with her mother. But our daughter knows just how far she can push things because there are rules we will not back down on. Luckily, we have taught our daughter to be her own person, so she is quite independent and a true individual. She does things that might not sit well with the social hierarchy of her school, like going to the movies with her father, for instance. The other night she asked if I would take her to the new Twilight series movie, Breaking Dawn, Part 1. My wife was under the weather, so I was selected to take her to this teenage must-see movie.

Having recently served on the juries for both Cinema Italiano and HIFF, for me, seeing this movie would be like a master sommelier drinking a Kool-Aid wine cooler. This would be my first Twilight movie of the four-movie series. It started, and I suddenly became the guy everyone hates to sit next to in the theater.

I was totally lost and kept asking my daughter questions like, “Who are the vampires and who are the werewolves? What happens to Jacob’s clothes when he turns into a werewolf? Why is Bella always sad?” My daughter kept “shushing” me and was getting irritated. I decided to Google this stuff on my iPhone. That’s when other teenage girl voices spoke up and told me to shut it off. I think I ruined the whole experience for them.

When the movie ended, my daughter wanted me to leave first so I wouldn’t be seen with her. I have to admit I was getting glares from young girls and even a few guys. As we walked back to the car, I tried to make it up to my daughter: “I can’t wait to see Part Two with you.” She hugged me and laughed, “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”