Gamma has changed her career plans. She no longer wants to run a disco.

“It will be like a disco, only the lights will be subdued and there will be sofas and there will be lounge music, for people to relax.” Gamma likes lounge music lately.

“You mean a chill-out club.”

“Sure.”

Gamma had a friend over for Halloween. They dressed as witches and I took them trick-or-treating. The next day, while Gamma was at her grandparents’, my wife and I did a little housecleaning. First of all, these being seven-year-old girls, there was a ring around the bathtub, like any bathtub ring, except this one glittered. In Gamma’s room, we found a mattress completely covered with toys, hair accessories, bags and other booty. Hundreds of little shiny objects, every single one of them a Hello Kitty product. I guess she was showing them to her friend.

In the playroom… Ah, the playroom. A large plastic bag full of the horse chestnuts Gamma likes to collect, all covered with a wicked fur of mold. Countless containers full of various poisonous-looking potions and stinking mixtures bad enough to make a health-department inspector wince. A soup made of stones and corn. Many unrelated things tied together with string, yarn and/or leather straps. A toy stuffed tiger rendered glittery. Container after container full of smallish objects ordered according to a principle obvious only to Gamma, and perhaps some ancient Lovecraftian being. My personal favorite: inside a baby doll’s crocheted underpants, a plastic scorpion.

Listen, my personal belief is that tiresome parents who brag about their children deserve a special corner in hell, but this girl bears watching.