Gerald Locklin uses his poem “No Longer a Teenager,” to give the reader a personal, in depth look into the emotions he feels about his daughter growing up. Using examples of his interactions with his daughter, Locklin not only expresses his feelings of uselessness, he also depicts his relief from the stress of raising a teenager. Locklin actively presents how highly he views his daughter above everything else in his life. With no narrator ever being truly set, the reader can assume that the narrator is no other than Gerald Locklin himself. The title, “No Longer a Teenager,” is relevant to the fact that he states that “my daughter, who turns twenty tomorrow,”. In the first few lines, Locklin revels in the fact that his daughter has “become truly independent.” He’s proud that she doesn’t need him to handle everyday issues like “landlords, bosses, and auto repair shops.” Locklin shows that he has absolute faith in his daughter’s abilities by stating that “she is quite capable of handling” them. However, while Locklin acknowledges his daughter’s independence, he also can’t help but feel useless to her. Locklin’s feeling of uselessness stems from the fact that he knows his daughter is independent and feels like “she doesn’t need her father to help her”. While Locklin feels useless in the eyes of his daughter, he also sees his daughter’s independence as a “big relief”, saying that “the teenage years were often stressful”. This eludes that Locklin and his daughter, like most parents and teens, had a somewhat difficult relationship. Locklin refers to a moment in the past where his daughter came to visit him from northern California for a couple of days. He expresses the hug she gives him as “the biggest, warmest hug in the whole world”. By giving the reader such a vivid description of a simple hug, Locklin shows how much he cares about his daughter. As he and his family went out to lu