(Baby, this one’s for you.) Fellow CareyGLY fans (BEST BLOG EVER), this child’s audacious dance clip has inspired me to confess a secret of which I’m not terribly proud, so bear with me please. Ok, here goes… Lately I’ve become a tad hyper-competitive with children. I know it’s childish, but someone has to take a stand against the tyranny of the little people. I suppose it’s that whole “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” phenom that got me started down this tragic path. Yes, let’s all have a good laugh at the expense of a bunch of grown-ups who never graduated from elementary school. What kind of a world do we live in? Bowling with midgets is deemed offensive, while painting adults out to be the intellectual inferiors of grade-schoolers for cash and prizes is somehow acceptable?! It’s outrageous! Yah, I admit it, I watch the damned show despite the fact that watching Jeff Foxworthy to me is the figurative equivalent of having a scorching case of crabs (relatively harmless, but just so persistently annoying, ya know?…Ok, maybe you don’t know, but trust me, he’s crabs). Anyway, after I lost a few rounds in the English composition category (FYI, I make my living as a journalist/editor…so maybe I don’t actually know what a pronoun is, but apparently neither do my readers), I guess things started getting personal. I dunno…these brats…they’re just so smug. I realized maybe this was becoming an issue for me at my cousin’s kid’s first birthday party a few weeks back. But I stand by my original assessment: that child was mugging for the camera and deliberately stealing my thunder! Every time I was about to bring the room down with the punch line to a carefully crafted and well-rehearsed anecdote I’d been setting up (you have no idea how hilarious a trip to Target can be), some fool would gush, “Ooooh, look at little Sophia! She’s making a face!” And in true sheep fashion, everyone would turn around and point and shake their heads and remark on just how awfully cute this child was and how she ought to do commercials (as if this is good advice…a child star…yah, I want my kid to end up like one of the “Different Strokes” survivors, or worse yet, Tina Yothers). “Making a face”?!?! Just what, precisely, does this mean and why does it merit attention? We all have faces. Did hers disappear and then suddenly reappear? Where’s the magic? The little hooker is only one year old. She’s incapable of expression in any cognitive sense. What gives?!?! She wasn’t even exactly smiling. In fact, she looked a bit flummoxed. If you ask me, she was taking a dump in her pants. Awwwwwww. How novel! The last time I messed my shorts in public no one clapped (I thought it was a fart). But I guess “the children” get a pass. What with their lobbyists and sycophantic parents, I’m sure they have loads of “special rights”—probably codified into law unbeknown to the rest of us, slipped into some Congressional spending bill along with the rest of the pork, paid for with The People’s tax dollars… And did I mention I’m no longer welcome at the Jewel on the corner of Broadway and Foster? It seems I had a minor lapse of composure while waiting in the check-out line on Monday night behind a mother and her kindergartner, who was sobbing inconsolably over the fact that mom would not buy him a bag of gummy bears. The nerve! These kids always expect someone else to foot the bill. I suppose getting a job is just out of the question, loser. So, just as he was about to launch into a full-out conniption, I grabbed young Mussolini by the shoulders, spun him around and barked into his face, jabbing my finger in his chest, “Life’s not fair! Get it? What makes you so special, anyway? I have dreams, too, ya know!” I think this is becoming an obsession. Next thing you know I’ll be elbowing babies out of the way at political rallies, slipping my cheek in at the last second to meet Sen. Obama’s kiss. Anyway, you can imagine my indignation when I watched this would-be Justin Timberlake bust his moves for the camera. Child, shouldn’t you be brushing up on your math homework instead of wasting your time flouncing around like a drag queen? You don’t want to be a dancer. It’s a tough life. A tough, glamorous life. I confess I was jealous. And I admired his moxie. The way he tossed the chair aside, so cavalierly, and pivoted his shoulders like a disco diva scorned…the kid had talent. That much I admitted. Then he effortlessly executed the splits, like two or three times. Show off. What are you? Six? Seven? Peanuts. I can do that. I think I pulled my groin. But here’s the ironic part: I emptied the last of our ice trays into a glass or two of scotch last night (to take the edge off) and never refilled them. If you would have told me last night that my husband would find me flat on my back on the floor this morning with one of my legs latched and frozen at a 90-degree angle against the chair by my computer crying for help, I would’ve laughed at you. And this explains why I’ve got a frozen rib roast wrapped in a bath towel defrosting firmly between my legs. I won’t bother to tell you what we’re having for dinner tonight.