If I hear one more necktie-wearing motherfucker on TV wonder when they’re gonna see “Shock and Awe” in action…

Sunny day in Vienna today, but there were icicles hanging from an old fountain we walked past on our way from the underground parking garage to the place where our oldest daughter was scheduled for a day-long intelligence test as part of her application to a gifted school here.

The directions there were a little vague. We found the street entrance, but it led to a large courtyard with about a dozen doors, which could, if one were running late and suffering from self-image problems and persecution anxieties, have been a real kafkaesque situation. Happily, we were all in good moods, my wife, my daughter and I.

“I bet this is part of the test,” I said.

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You know how when you go to a meeting of the parents’ association at the music school and everyone’s sitting around the table eating pretzels and the dumpy mom treasurer enters the room only she’s lost thirty pounds and is fit, is wearing jeans as tight as they get, her hair’s longer, no longer dishwater strawberry blonde but instead dyed black with lots of magenta, and she’s got a black wonderbra on under her tan sweater? Don’t you love it when that happens?

She asked me to tuck her in, and for a foot massage. She was tired. Unicorns on her walls, and horses of course and a couple hugging. Hands of various races grasped in friendship. Doves and peace signs. American flags, and the Statue of Liberty. I must have seen them a thousand times in there, but never looked at them before. So many different peace signs. So much pride in her American citizenship.

Her feet were in sad shape, red and blistered and chafed; in cool but ill-fitting boots she’d walked for hours along the river with a boy, from town out to the rowing club, then back to the school she attended, before ducking into the local Japanese restaurant for kappa maki sans wasabi. I massaged the feet until my hands cramped.

She looked closely. She leaned in for a closer look.

“Dad, do you have gel in your hair today?”

“I have gel in my hair almost every day.”

“Fpfpfpfpfpff.”