At the risk of possibly offending those readers whose situations are different from my own (believe me, no such offense is intended, and apologies in advance if any is taken), I must admit that there are times when I find myself happy to be raising sons instead of daughters.

Typically these feelings have come bubbling to the surface after visiting my younger brother and hearing about the latest travails experienced in the raising of his three daughters. Don't get me wrong; I love my nieces to pieces, and I know they've brought a lot of joy to Jerry's life. But on occasion they've also brought a certain glassy-eyed, numb expression to his countenance that I'm pretty sure I've never experienced as the father of two boys.

Every now and then my wife and I will sit around and wonder what it might have been like to have a little girl. But such speculation is a moot point, really. While I know I would have loved a daughter every bit as much as I do my sons, I also know that I wouldn't trade either of my boys for anything in the world. And that means anything.

Besides, I really don't know that I would have been qualified to raise a little girl, having grown up in a house where the only other female besides Mom was our dog Duchess. That doesn't exactly give me a frame of reference upon which can be built any kind of expertise.

For one thing there's the issue of numbers. Mom may have been the only woman in the house, but I learned early on that even with Dad and all three of us boys she still had us outnumbered. Not being good at math I've never quite understood that, but it is a truism all the same. (And these days I'm at even more of a disadvantage, given that Dad had three sons to lean on for moral support and I've only got the two...)

Given our shared background, then, I can't help but really admire my brother for having managed to raise even one daughter, let alone three. About the only thing I can think of to compare it to is the story of Robinson Crusoe - though I'll be the first to admit that my nieces may not entirely appreciate my equating their upbringing by a man with no sisters to the experiences of a man forced to survive for years marooned on a deserted island.

More recently there has been another situation which has left me feeling extremely fortunate to have not had a daughter - namely, the popularity of all these books, movies and television programs featuring sexy young vampires as the male protagonists.

I'm sorry, but I just don't get the fascination. In my day vampires were the BAD GUYS. You weren't supposed to root for them - and you most definitely weren't supposed to let your daughters fall in love with them.

Okay, sure, there may have been a certain aristocratic handsomeness to be found in the likes of Bela Lugosi, John Carradine and Christopher Lee. And yes, there was a somewhat heroic quality to Barnabas Collins.

But Barnabas was a character in a soap opera, of all things, and therefore not necessarily meant to be taken all that seriously. (Sorry, soap opera fans, but from what I've seen there's no more "reality" to be found in the soaps than there were in the Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch as a kid.)

And the women who fell prey to Lugosi, Lee, et. al. in the old horror movies generally put forth at least some attempt (half-hearted at times, I'll admit, but some effort all the same) to fight off their unnatural attraction to those vampires of yore. "Unnatural" being the operative term; the vampires in those old movies were always having to use some form of mind control to ensnare the hapless heroines.

These days the heroines pretty much throw themselves at the vampires, and in some cases hope beyond hope to be turned into vampires themselves. And the female fans fall into a swoon and wish they were in the heroines' shoes. I'm sure ol' Bela would have viewed such behavior with suspicion, believing that it couldn't possibly be that easy to seduce the heroine without it being some sort of a trap. And in those days he would have been right.

And it's not just the young girls but their mothers as well who seem entranced by this new generation of bloodsuckers. There's an ad airing on TV right now that shows a mother and her daughters watching a scene from the latest movie in the Twilight series. One of the girls mouths a silent "I love you" to the vampire on the screen, but Mom looks every bit as smitten as the daughters.

I don't know, it all seems just a little creepy to me.

It has been suggested to me by more than one fan of such books and films that I don't get it because I'm a guy. I'll concede that point. Indeed, it may very well be the point.

It has also been suggested - by a male acquaintance of mine, and (I hope) only in jest - that I'm actually harboring some weird secret jealousy, and that what I really want is to get bitten by a vampire bat and be somehow transformed into a sexy vampire myself.

Believe me, it's just not true. Sleeping all day, drinking blood and trying to avoid garlic simply is NOT my idea of a good time.

And even if it were, knowing my luck I'd most likely end up only getting bitten by a nearsighted fruit bat...

(Editor's Note: In the interest of fairness, it should be pointed out here that Mr. Small is the author of "Kiss of the Vampire," an essay chronicling the career of the scantily-clad, sexy female vampire character Vampirella, published in the 2005 anthology MYTHS FOR THE MODERN AGE: PHILIP JOSE FARMER'S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE, which is still available for order at Amazon.com. The essay posted here is copyrighted 2010, by John A. Small)