Sasha's classroom—till next week.

Yesterday, when I went to pick Sasha up from day care, the school’s director, Ms. Zoe, cornered me in the hallway outside the classroom and said she wanted to talk. Maybe I should sit down.

Oh, fuck, I thought, who did Sasha bite?

No one, it turned out. Instead, Ms. Zoe told me, with Sasha’s 2nd birthday about six weeks away, we should get ready for her to move up a class—and, in fact, if we wanted to move her early, there would be a spot opening up next week.

Um, yes! I can’t begin to describe to you the waves of joy that seized me, and not only because we’ll now be spending $100 less per month to warehouse our daughter in Chinatown. See, Sasha is one of three kids of almost exactly the same age in her class—the others being her friends Paige and Caterina—but Sasha’s selection as the first to ascend to the 2-year-old class irrefutably demonstrates that she’s ahead of her peers. In other words, Sasha is better, smarter, and more able to follow directions. She fucking rocks. And now, at last, I understand New York parents a little better: From a distance, all that competition looks and feels weird, unseemly, but once your in the thick of it, you can’t help but hope your little precious will best her schoolmates. And when it happens—awesome! I’m thinking of buying a bumper sticker.