"…I never intended to be
the father of two teenage daughters. I suppose if I had
been asked, I might have chosen to go with something cheaper,
like a stable of race horses, or something easier to raise,
like wolverines."
-- The opening lines from 8 Simple Rules
For Dating My Teenage Daughter And other tips from a beleaguered
father (not that any of them work) Workman Publishing May
2001
Cameron Column # 76 was published as an Internet column
in early 1998 and immediately declared "really, really
stupid" by Cameron's daughters. Yet it struck a chord
with fathers all over the world who, up to this point, assumed
that their daughters had been brainwashed by hostile extraterrestrials.
The 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage
Daughter went on to be published in the Denver Rocky
Mountain News in 1999 and was turned into a book of the
same name in May 2001. But it was on the Internet where
it really took off: the essay is currently carried on thousands
of websites, often altered and sometimes without Bruce's
copyright. Absolute
Write magazine calls Bruce "the most plagiarized
man on the Internet.
If you see this essay without attribution, please
let us know!
