In light of the recent flurry of verbose parents’ ranting status updates about their fabulous children on Facebook, here is my translation of the subtext of said posts:

My child is so utterly fantastically superior to most any other child and it must be my uncanny parenting skills that have facilitated such an undeniable fact. Thank goodness, he/she has achieved x, y or z and has a trophy, certificate, report card, beautiful face, exceptional talent or remarkable astuteness (or all of them) to exhibit as indisputable evidence that he/she is a gift to humanity. Actually, thank me for being such an extraordinary parent and being able to produce and rear such high quality offspring. And especially, thank Facebook for enabling me to alert the public to the greatness in their midst so they can be sure to start ass kissing my 2, 5, 9, 12 year old right now before he/she hits the big time. To be more concise, the world would spin off its axis without he/she/us. 

I just wonder sometimes who people are directing their posts to when they gush and brag relentlessly. I know they’re proud. But that takes one sentence to convey, if it needs conveying at all.  Of course I have occasionally, though rarely, been guilty of posting about my terrific children myself – still, I try to at least keep it to one sentence. I don’t think I’m better than the gushers, just get a kick out of pondering how awesomely funny it would be if they just went all out and posted my interpretation of their status updates. I wonder how many “likes” they’d get . 😉