A southern California dad kept his tradition of picking up his daughter from school—while imitating his favorite hip-hop stars—until her last day of high school, leaving her in tears.
“It felt so surreal,” Jayna Smith, a Golden Valley High School graduate told The Epoch Times. “Seeing my dad there and just realizing that it would be the last pickup was a bittersweet moment. I was very happy, but I was also sad. ... He had the flowers, the balloons.”
Jayna’s dad, Jevin Smith, describes himself as a “very involved” father. From attending every performance that she has participated in to watching every game she and her three siblings have played, he said he has “been at everything that she’s done.”
“Throughout her 17 years ... I’ve been there for her every step of the way, and I take pride in that I’ve never missed anything,” he said.
The father of four began the daddy-daughter pick-ups when Jayna was in tenth grade. His creative pick-ups involved dressing up as his favorite hip-hop artists and dancing to their music while Jayna got in the car.
Recalling the first pick-up, Jayna said: “I was embarrassed. He got out of the car and began dancing. I didn’t expect him to come out and surprise me like that. So I was like, ‘Dad, get back in the car,’ because I didn’t want my friends to see, and everybody was laughing.”
Gradually Jayna grew to love the tradition, recognizing that it’s part of who her dad is, and it’s his way of showing he loves her. Her friends and peers at school found the pick-ups to be positive. They were touched that her dad would go the extra mile to be “sweet and funny.”
“They think he’s a ray of sunshine,” Jayna said, adding her friends have expressed their desire to do something like this for their kids in the future.
However, beyond the embarrassment, Mr. Smith wanted his kids to learn to be stronger.
“I really think that by me doing this, she’s developed more of a like, ‘Okay, who cares what people think?’ I want her to not care, because people are always going to have an opinion,” he said. “Sometimes we get so wrapped up, and we think that people are looking at me. [But it] could be the opposite thing, just like she said, her friends love it.”
“My favorite one was definitely when he was just going all out, and he was on the floor with the guitar,” she said.
For Jayna’s final pick-up in May, he wanted to do something “extra special” for her.
“I picked ‘End of the Road,’ because that was a song that was very sentimental, and it had a lot of meaning to it,” he said. “This was the end of the road for her high school career.”
Expecting the song and pick-up to be a fun and energetic end to his daughter’s high school days, Mr. Smith was surprised when it turned out emotional.
Jayna said she was moved to tears when she realized that her four years of high school had come to an end.
“Everything that I went through, and just all the successes, and the amount of times my dad has done the pick-ups for this to be the last one at school made me very emotional,” she said.
Jayna is now preparing to start a new chapter at UC Irvine this fall.
Even though Jayna is embarking on her adult years, Mr. Smith still plans to be very involved.
“She’s not going to be far from us,” he said. “So I’m still going to pop up on her.
“I think this is a crucial time. I think this is the time where you really have to draw closer to your children. ... They’re going to need you the most because [of] all of those life lessons that you taught them. Now they go out in the real world, and they have to use it.”
