Jennifer Hudson and Serial Killers

Super Bowl Sunday, lots of teenage girls are getting ready for the Big Game and a glimpse of Jennifer Hudson lip synching the National Anthem. But G wanted to hit Barnes & Noble.

She asks for money for the bookstore. The wife gives her 80 bucks. I’m secretly having a heart attack, though G is good about bringing back the change.

She leaves the house with black jeans covered in menacing silver zippers, high shiny black books with a mile of laces, and a skull-and-crossbones hand bag. I’m wondering how G got so sleek and tall and where this child actually came from.

Later, she arrives home with a thick book about Serial Killers.

She spends the whole afternoon reading it, mostly serious – really studying the content – but occasionally smiling and giggling.

I slept OK that night, though the bedroom door was locked.

Lately, V and I hadn’t had much luck talking with this infinitely complicated 13-year old girl. But the last few nights, G is an ocean of words. She's giving us detailed psychological explanations of the serial killer nature v. nurture argument (as kids, most serial killers were pyromaniac bed wetters who tortured animals); knocking back the myth most serial killers are caucasian (they pretty much mirror the population, you just don’t hear about black people getting killed because blacks tend to kill blacks – just as whites tend to kill whites – and the media will put the murder of a rich white socialite on the cover but a dozen black girls disappearing in the projects doesn’t rate), and making the case that believing there are very few female serial killers is wrong (the first woman serial killer dates back to the 15th century.)

So next time you see gruesome pictures of body parts preserved in some quiet dude’s fridge, there is a silver lining.

That usually white male former pyromaniac animal torturing bed wetter is bringing my daughter and me closer.