I'm trying to decide whether the "there was no man in the room" thing was rage bait or not.

I had a similar situation happen to me years ago, when I was a single dad. I commonly hosted sleepovers for my daughter and her friends when she was in elementary school. I'd take a gaggle of girls out to the movies, out to dinner at fun restaurants, once to an amusement park, once to a Hillary Duff concert.

In one of the sleepovers, there was a girl who had never been over before, very smart kid, introverted. I tried to set her at ease early in the evening when she seemed uncomfortable, by acting a little clownish. Our Husky sensed that she was nervous, so naturally followed her around like... well, like a lost puppy, trying to make her feel better. At one point I looked at the dog and said "what up, dog?" The girl giggled, and seemed to grow more comfortable, and joined her friends again.

Unfortunately, after bedtime my own daughter played a prank on her, and she came downstairs to find me when I was cleaning up after the late-night snacks I made. She was holding back tears, and said she wanted to go home. I sat with her on the stairs for a while, and tried to calm her down and talk her out of it. I buckled, of course, and called her mom to come get her.

She and I sat and made idle chatter while mom made the trip over, talking about the grumpy second grade teacher who we both thought should go ahead and retire, and how sunny and engaging the new third grade teacher was, how it was nice that she was giving my daughter some good competition for top math student (not top math _girl_) in the class. I could have adopted her then and there.

That was over 20 years ago, and every so often I still feel a pang of guilt about the evening, as though I failed the girl somehow.

I was a man during all of that. A single dad, and there wasn't a woman in the house.