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Scrolling through dozens of unsolicited links to NPR articles attached to emails from her father, 17-year-old Greer Davis confirmed Monday that the messages were her dad’s misguided attempt to bond with her.
Greer explained that despite the consistency of the messages, she had never expressed interest in any of the subjects of the pieces her father emailed her. “This one is about how Harry Truman felt after he was no longer president,” said Davis, pointing to a message in which her father had sloppily pasted the entire text of the article into the body of the email without attempting to format it. “We have never talked about Harry Truman before, so I don’t understand why he thought I needed to see this.”
An analysis of the messages shows that a number of the subject lines read “Interesting,” or “:(“ while many others were just left blank. “Last week he sent me a story about Jackie Robinson fighting against prejudice, and I thought maybe it was because I was trying out for the school soccer team. But he also sent one about how a woman’s battle with alcoholism opened her to the world around her, so his intentions are hard to pin down,” explained Davis.
Sources report that Davis’s father often seems to shy away from more hands on forms of connecting with his teenage daughter. “When I told him we needed to have ‘the talk’ with Greer, he told me he needed to fix the roof again, so I should do it on my own,” stated Greer’s mother, Kelly Davis, adding that when Greer got her first period her husband immediately booked a two-week fishing trip with his work friends, and emailed Davis a link to an old interview with the creators of Wallace and Gromit.
At press time, sources confirmed that Davis’s father had been seen giving her cash for her birthday while embracing her in an awkward side hug.
