Gentle Readers, the day has come. My lovely Wonder Girl has a date. With a real, live, boy.

She met him at the Mondo Youth Conference out west last month. He goes to a Presby church two counties away. I know his pastor and the DCE at the church, so I could have him checked out. I've resisted so far, because really, what will I then do when she dates boys who don't attend church in this Presbytery? Or...boys who don't go to church at all? (shudder!)

Her dad is worried about her being in a movie theater with a boy who is almost sixteen. (He remembers being almost sixteen, apparently.) I gave her a primer on the old stretch-yawn-grab-the-girl move. She just laughed at me. She tells me I have watched too many bad 70's sitcoms. She's probably right.

I don't know why I'm so worried. She has spent almost 32 supervised hours on a bus with this boy, plus spending a supervised week at Mondo with him. We're driving her to the movie, 40 miles away, and driving her home. It's a foolproof plan to get the first date out of the way.

I worry that she's not ready to get her heart broken, that she's not ready to decide if she really likes this boy or not. I worry that she will give away too much of herself, emotionally, to this boy. I worry because she is so darn much like me. I read the stories about kids younger than her who are casual with physical and emotional intimacy, I worry that I haven't prepared her adequately--even though we have been talking about this stuff (age appropriately) since she was about three years old.

I worry that I will ruin the excitement of this moment for her. I keep telling myself, "Breath." Oh Lord, let me not ruin this with worrying about things I can't control...

Edit: Said date has been postponed to next weekend. The boy forgot his parents were going "up north" this weekend and taking him with them. Another week to worry about this. Oh goody.