I’m bold sometimes.  Shameless really.  I had moved with my kids to Santa Monica, just a few blocks from a coveted, very hard-to-get-into nursery school.  Circle of Children.   I knew someone (hadn’t seen him in years) that was famous, actually, his wife was the famous one, and I read somewhere that their kid went to this school.     I totally used the connection, dropping the name at my interview — without permission — and got myself, or rather my son Barnaby, in.  I said I was shameless.  A mother’s gotta do what a mother’s gotta do.  Not only did I use that connection but I revealed to close friends my secret entree into this “private club” of a preschool, and they got their kids in too.

This place totally catered to celebrities, so much so, that when I met a big-name actress at a party, she told me she pulled her son from the school because of the obsequious manner in which famous parents there, including herself, were treated.   And she is really famous, but it sickened her.   And there was a hierarchy; we, the not-remotely-famous, were put in the lower, B group, and not with the A-listers.    The parents of Barnaby’s group were television actors, or people who created TV shows, and losers like me.  Barnaby was an outside kid.  Literally, kept outside.   Inside, with a roof over their heads, were the name kids.   Each morning, I threw on my sweats (confession: I didn’t throw them on, I slept in them), pinned up my hair, applied no makeup and dropped my kid off, having to pass Spielberg, Rob Reiner, Tom Hanks and sometimes Schwarzenegger.   Daily.   Oy, it was annoying.  Your kid is only three or four years old, you can’t just drop him on the corner and say good-bye.  You had to park and walk in each day, passing these people like you were on a studio lot.  Preschool is not AA, I can break anonymity here.  At a certain point each day, the B group got to mix it up with celeb kids, and on one particular day when I went to fetch Barnaby, a teacher pulled me aside.  Apparently Barnaby hit the Hanks kid.  The teacher had both kids in tow.  I looked down at my son and said, “Say you’re sorry to Chester, Barnaby.”  “I’m sowwy, Chester.”  “Great, let’s go.”  I always wanted to get out of there fast.  I felt like we were imposters. (more…)