GAP.....

There have been two occasions where my daughter responded my speech in a way I least expected it.  Occasion one was when I picked my daughter Dini up from school after she stayed back in the school in the event of 'after School' program. I met her by the tennis court and drove the car close to her and stopped there for her to come in. She was there with her friend who happened to be smaller than her and Dini asked me if we could drop her friend off on the way home. I said we could, and then they hopped in the car. Trying to make Dini's friend comfortable I asked her uttering, "Whats your name baby?"

She told me who her name was and we continued talking until we dropped her off in her walkway. No sooner than we left her; my daughter Dini agitatedly said,

"Dad, that was creepy".

"What was creepy?"

"You didn't know what was creepy. The way you addressed my friend was creepy."

I realized that calling her friend as "baby" was so creepy to her. I didn't know, man I didn't know. Conceivably I should have called her 'sweety' or 'little one' or 'little girl'. To my daughter calling her friend  'baby' must have been too raunchy; if you know what I mean, and indeed a real wrong choice of word!

Another time we were in the Church. Dini was was reading Bible verses in Mizo. I taught her to read that particular verse at home without any accent. Now here she was reading the Bible verse in Mizo, and I was there a proud father listening carefully if she made mistakes to correct her later at home. Back at home I said to her,

"Boihte I was so proud of you then that I could not help staring at you."

"That's creepy Paaa.."

"You think so, I didn't know.."

Later I thought it over about what my daughter said 'creepy' really were. To me those occasions didn't seem creepy at all. I thought I just admired what my girl was doing and looked at her lovingly. In their environment though staring people in any form seems to be creepy. This is something one need to avoid! Surely, young people growing up in today's world are different from our times back then. The only conclusion I now have is, the way we perceive things will never be the same with the people of next generations. Perhaps this is what they often called a generation gap.