“Tell me a story?” said the little girl, crawling into her bed.

The 12-year-old turned back the sheets and fluffed her pillow. This, after she had dutifully brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, and suffered through an elaborate bathroom hygenic routine which required about as much time as it took to complete the Sistine Chapel.

“You want a bedtime story?” I said.

“Yes, please,” she said.

Then, I watched the little girl pause her bedtime regime to connect six various electronic devices to a rat’s nest of 120-volt chargers slithering upon her nightstand. She worked with her electronics so deftly, moving by rote, actuating various buttons, navigating through an impossible tangle of high-voltage cables as efficiently as a 45-year-old IT-support technician. Eventually, her bedside stand was a mass of tiny, blinking indicator LEDs. It takes a lot of electricity to be a modern kid.

“Okay,” she said, diving under the covers. “I’m ready for my story.”

I do not have kids. I know nothing about children. I am a “guy.” I don’t think about the many unimportant things child-rearing people naturally think about, such as, for instance, lunch.

Thus, whenever our goddaughter comes to visit us, I often feel as clueless as a one-legged cat in a sandbox.

But I DO know how to tell stories. Finally, I was thinking to myself, something I actually know how to do. Because, God knows, I don’t know anything else about the mysteries of girlhood.

Yesterday, for example, we were at Home Depot when the kid announced she had to use the bathroom. I thought, no big deal. Going to the bathroom is a straightforward procedure. I waited outside the restroom for 18 minutes.

I kept calling into the bathroom, saying, “My God, are you blowing up the toilet in there?” Whereupon two elderly women exited the bathroom scowling at me.

So, I sat on the girl’s bed and said, “I can’t tell you a story unless you give me a few parameters, first.”

“What’s parameters?”

“I’m an author. I need literary framework. What’s my story arc?”

“Huh?”

I’ve been telling stories for a living for the latter part of my adulthood as a professional writer. This daily column has been my life for over a decade now. So has traveling around the country, performing my one-man trainwreck on stages in small-town theaters, civic centers, and various cattle auctions.

This is why we never had kids. There was no time for kids. I spent the majority of my marriage stuck in Harstfield-Jackson International Airport, trying to think up meaningless sentences exactly like this one.

Which is why I often wonder whether I’ve wasted my life. What have I been DOING all these years? When I die, nobody will hold my hand and say, “We love you, Daddy.” I don’t mean to reach for melodrama, but there aren’t that many folks who actually “need” me. If any.

Sometimes in public, I see people with their kids, acting paternal. They are needed. They have a clear mission. And I realize that I chose a much less noble profession.

But somehow, despite my idiocy, the universe, in all its goodness, chose to let me have one kid in my life.

And as the girl snuggled against me, I tucked her in. She kissed my cheek and told me she loved me.

“Okay,” she said, falling into Neverland. “I’m ready for my story now.”

And well, that’s what you just read.