CARLTON FLETCHER: So this is what they mean about being a father

Who did you meet, my darling young one? … I met one man who was wounded in love, I met another man who was wounded in hatred. … And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

— Bob Dylan

While the largest majority of you were out battling for bargains on Black Friday, I was in a state of shock. My mind was half a world away, in Okinawa, Japan, where my daughter was getting married.

While talking with my old buddy — emphasis on the old — Levine last week, telling him about Jordan Fletcher’s pending nuptials with Matthew Cannon, Levine told me I had to write a column about it. I told him folks weren’t really interested in my personal stuff, but he insisted. I relented, knowing this may be a column only for Levine, Bill and myself. We’ll get back to the real irrelevancy next week.

Over the last few weeks, as this marriage that seemed so surreal while in the discussion phase was looming, I’ve had to come at it from any direction other than straight-on. This was my baby girl everyone was talking about, after all, the painfully shy little one who grew out of that when she discovered she had no fear of flying and could land a perfect scorpion while at the top of a cheerleader pyramid.

This is the goofy child who co-authored the “Slap Dragon Song” with me — we were playing the legendary card game while doing 75 on a back-country Alabama highway at the time — and carried the saying-the-same-thing-at-the-same-time “jinx” game to a level no one’s ever dreamed of … “jinx, double jinx, jinx-jinx-jinx, cat-jinx, dog-jinx, hippopotamus-jinx …” it goes on quite a ways from there and ends with a little Charlie Daniels, but I’ll skip those details. (Incidentally, we can still duet on both without missing a beat.)

She’s the devious one of the three Fletcher kids — and, yes, they’re all still kids when they’re together despite the fact that they’re 36, 21 and 12 — who almost always wins when they engage in a disgusting fart-off that runs everyone else out of the room. As the 12-year-old says when she’s around her big sister, “Yep, silent but Jordie.”

She’s also the one who gave up a Music Midtown weekend — missing Eminem and Gregg Allman! — out of loyalty to her two pregnant best friends, Jessica and Sumar, whose babies are due two days apart. They were having one of those girly “gender reveal” gatherings, and she didn’t want to not be there. (She’ll also miss time being with her new husband because she wants to be with her besties when their babies are born … that’s a real BFF.)

And she’s the one who inspired countless people — people like County Attorney Spencer Lee — to come up and tell me how much they enjoyed being served by her, how impressive she was, while working at Harvest Moon or Henry Campbell’s.

Everyone has asked me if I’m going to be all sad when Jordie heads to Japan and her new life with her new husband. I tell them the same thing I told her: I wish she would have waited a while longer to get married — I am a dad, after all — but what I wish means nothing. I want her to live her life to the fullest, to have her own adventures and to not worry about what anyone else thinks.

Most of all, I want with every fiber of my being for her to be happy. If she finds happiness half the world away — and who wouldn’t love starting out a new life in a new land and culture? — I’m good. Sure, I’ll miss talking about music with her, going on trips and listening to the Brothers, Panic, Kanye, J.J. Gray, Paul Simon — especially Paul Simon, our daddy/daughter jam — and Evan Barber & the Dead Gamblers. And I’ll miss watching her eyes crinkle and light up when she laughs, which, thank God, has always been often.

No, I’m not going to be sad that my first baby girl has a new favorite man in her life. And I’m not going to sit around thinking about how much I miss seeing her. And I’m not going to think about how much joy I’ve had in the last month or so watching her and her little sister dance together at the Big Pine Festival and cook together in our kitchen.

And if I keep telling myself those lies, just maybe I’ll start to believe them.