the littlest browncoats

A friend of mine recently described Evangeline as cute "in a geeky sort of way."

The proof is in the kitchen right now. As my laptop plays the theme from "Firefly," Evangeline is singing along, in the right key, knowing every word by heart, and with all the yearning of the Malcolm Reynolds she hides inside her thoughtful, expressive exterior. And she's never even seen the show.

Her younger sister isn't much different. Last summer, Rachel wowed her Uncle Brian with an enthusiastic rendition of "The Ballad of Jayne Cobb," also known by heart.

So my children unquestionably are geeks. That's probably also why Evangeline swears "by Peter, Paul and Mary" (but not yet by Crosby, Stills and Nash), and why the girls each know the lyrics to at least half a dozen Bob Dylan songs. They may be geeks, but as Indigo observes, it's a cute sort of geekiness.

The trouble is that behind them stands another geek, the one responsible for teaching them not only these songs but many others also. That person -- whoever he (or she) may be -- is the ubergeek, and there's no doubt that it's not as cute where she (or he) is concerned.

my daughter, the fangirl

Well, I'm proud to say that Evangeline is well on her way to becoming a full-blooded fangirl. That she enjoys being told tales from "Lord of the Rings" is no surprise. What is taking me by surprise is how far she's taking these things.

She made the connection between Mulan and her namesake last fall, which racheted up her interest in the Disney movie quite a bit. Last week, we were finishing our homeschool study on the American Revolution by reading a true story about a soldier named Robert Shurtliff. About halfway through the story, we discovered that Robert's real name was Deborah Samson. Evangeline's interest in the story leaped, and when I asked her why she thought Deborah Samson had disguised herself as a man and gone off to fight in the Revolution, she had an answer right away: "Because she knew that no man could hinder the British."

For our anniversary and for Father's Day, I received three different Spider-Man trade paperbacks written by J. Michael Straczynski of "Babylon 5" fame. Natasha has been reading these almost as fast as I have, and the past two days, she has been reading them to Evangeline including tonight, as a bedtime story. After we said our prayers, Evangeline confided in me that she's into Spider-Man even more than "The Incredibles" and would like to have a Spider-Man dress to wear.

What's a dad to do? Much of Straczynski's writing is either too mature or too advanced for her, so I'm going through my collection of trade paperbacks and figuring out which ones are safe for her to read. ("Sandman" is right out, as are "Kraven's Last Hunt" and "Maus.") Tomorrow I'm going to introduce her to Superman, via John Byrne's "Man of Steel" from the mid-1980s; and see if I can find some Spider-Man cartoons we can watch together over the weekend.

When I was a teen in high school, or even a college student, I never would have dreamed that I would marry someone who could enjoy intelligent, well-written comic books as much as I do. And now I have a daughter who enjoys them too.