That was my little girl. It doesn't seem so long ago that I sat beside her in my armchair, keeping an eye on the news while watching her learn to read. But it's been 10 years now, and my Samantha is pregnant with her own little girl.

There is no easy way for a father to accept that his daughter is a teen mother. When she tearfully broke the news to me, I didn't know what to feel. Disappointment. Anger. Shame. And that was just the first two seconds.

Samantha couldn't meet my eyes. I couldn't meet hers, either. We were like two ends of a seatbelt, straining unsuccessfully over a large beer belly. For a moment, I felt poetic.

Oh black eye'd Samantha,
My child of fair Rome,
Your fate cometh for thee,
You are no longer my own.

It was a day I would never forget.

Stone whistled along to the twanging of the guitar he could hear in his mind. The resonant chords of his mental bass guitar echoed beautifully and masked the unnatural silence of his surroundings. His boots made a rhythmic scuff with each step he took, and he counted time to himself.

A few minutes later, Stone nonchalantly directed his impatient, rebellious gaze down the road again, appearing to any potential onlooker as if he were merely interested in calculating the amplitude and frequency of the heat ripples on the horizon. There were, of course, no onlookers.

"Doesn't seem much like there's action hereabouts," he muttered to himself, surreptitiously wiping the sweat from his face. "And I reckon I forgot to program my VCR for American Idol again." He uttered an unintelligible oath.

In two seconds, the TV show was forgotten, not because it was a really dumb show, but because Stone Johnson found himself with a generous knuckle sandwich and a faceful of dirt on the side.