Being a father to a teenage girl (no, a teenage woman) is watching the new marathon Beatles documentary and wanting to show her how genius-level creativity works, by having her sit down and watch just three minutes of the seven hours, where McCartney and the gang invent “Get Back” from whole cloth while they wait for a tardy John Lennon to arrive for rehearsal.

It’s calling her in, but being told, “I’m in the middle of something.”

It’s asking, “In the middle of what?”

It’s being told, “I’m dyeing my eyebrows.”

And it’s having the rest of the night ruined, by the time-consuming and cumbersome process of distilling your filthy rage into pure sadness, at the memory of hoisting this same person onto your lap where she would eagerly watch any YouTube video you put in front of her, whether Fred Astaire singin’ in the rain, or young Cassius dancin’ in Miami.

Well, she and I are headed to St. Louis tomorrow for a soccer tournament. And if you think she’s going to get through that 12-hour round trip without watching this, then you don’t know the depth of my animal determination to continue to influence her tastes and expand her vision, right up until the day she throws dirt in my face.