Looks can be deceiving

My daughter asked me the day how old you have to be to say someone's cute. I told her that she can say someone's cute anytime she wants. You don't have to be a certain age. Then she asked me how old she had to be to kiss a boy. I told her 25. "Aw, Dad" she said with a "I know you're kidding" smile. "OK, 18 if you behave" I said."

Pressed further, she said she had seen a boy on the bus the first day of school that she thought was cute, and seemed nice. She didn't know his name. I told her that she should say hi and see if he really was nice. That was last week.

Today she informed me that she had talked to him and found out his name, though she couldn't recall it on the spot. Something else she learned... He's in 7th grade -- my daughter is in 4th!

She rides two buses to and from school. The first bus also takes middle school kids and then she transfers to another bus that goes just to her school. If the seventh grader was nice enough to indulge a fourth grader, he can't be that bad... Can he?

Oh, I'm not ready for this. Isn't there something I can take to just sleep through the next 10 years? My daughter is a very outgoing, friendly, blue-eyed-blond cutie. My wife and I used to call her "our little abduction risk" jokingly. It's not so funny anymore.