What's Up, Doc? A Proud Father Speaks Out

By Randall Freeman, PhD

Our oldest daughter, Daniela, turned 17 in June. She is in her senior year of high school. Talk is about the colleges she wants to attend, ranging from Occidental College in Los Angeles to the University of Toronto (that’s in northeastern Canada – not La Canada, but CANADA).

Mom Karen and Grandma Rosemary are voting for someplace closer than Toronto, Canada. I just want her to go where she wants to go. I am in the minority, as usual.

Daniela was born in 1997. She first visited Disneyland when she was 3 weeks old. (Karen and I were celebrating our fourth anniversary that summer. We had begun our honeymoon there, so for a number of years we went back there for our anniversary. Taking a 3-week-old baby was not my idea of celebrating, but I was out-voted (Karen had 2 votes, I had 1.)

Daniela was a traveling girl. Her (technically anyway) first movie was "Men In Black." She was 3 months old and we went to the Van Buren Drive-In in Riverside so we didn't have to pay for a babysitter. Her first real movie was "Toy Story 2". To prepare her, we showed her "Toy Story" on video. She fell in love with it.

For the next several years, Daniela was Buzz Lightyear. For Halloween, she would dress as Buzz. She WAS Buzz. She began naming family members as characters from Toy Story. Karen was Woody. That was cool and appropriate. Buzz and Woody were best friends; so were Daniela and Mommy.

Somehow the triplets became the Little Green Men. I thought that that was also appropriate, though I never said that to them. Grammy (great-grandma) was Jesse. I was Rex the Dinosaur. Figures.

Daniela has always amazed me with her focus on her goals. She earned a Presidential citation for being on the Honor Roll in all the years that grades were given. I earned detention a few times in Sister Guadalupe’s fifth grade class for talking. (To be fair, I think she found reasons because I corrected her on such things as Australia being a continent and Greenland being an island.)

Daniela was in Symphonic Band for all three years at Bell Mountain Middle School. She played the bass clarinet. She also played in Concert and Jazz Bands. I got detention at Sierra Junior High School a few times for talking. (I begin to detect some patterns here.) Her grade point average was excellent, as usual.

At Vista Murrieta High School, Daniela has earned her varsity letters in water polo and swimming. The last time I took her jacket to Logo Joe’s, it must have weighed 50 pounds. I... (tricked you. Thought I got detention in high school, didn't you? By now I had learned to keep my mouth shut.)

Daniela plays goalie in water polo. She will play water polo in college. I had never heard of water polo until she started playing it. I still don’t understand it very well. She does, and that’s what counts.

I was very proud (and sore) to sit through TWO pep rallies while Daniela was escorted through the gym as one of the four scholar-athletes for the 2013-2014 school year. Her GPA is somewhere in the stratosphere; I can’t count that high. Mine was 2.81. Must be recessive genes.

Fortunately for me, Daniela doesn't have time to read this column. If she read this, I would be dead in seconds. Don’t tell her.

Randy Freeman and his family have lived in Menifee since 1993. Randy teaches kindergarten in Perris and his wife Karen teaches first grade here in Menifee at Freedom Crest Elementary School. They are the parents of four daughters: Daniela, 17, and 13-year-old triplets Sarah, Holly, and Megan. Randy earned his PhD in early childhood education in 2011 and has served on the Menifee Union School Board since 2008. As he explains it, this makes him Karen's boss for the first and only time in the marriage. His column will appear here every other Tuesday.