Chick Magnet

My son's best friend is a chick magnet. He's six, but he's been a bonafide chick magnet since he was about four. The girls line up to sit next to him at story time and to chase him on the playground at recess. Some have even gone so far as to do his cutting and gluing for him, much to his mother's horror. He is swathed in girls every moment of the day and has been since they could wobble towards him.

And so it begins.

He is bathed in starlight, has been anointed with pixie dust and blown kisses by angels. His eyes-dimples-smile combo with extra cheese is impossible to resist, by even the most hard hearted crossing guards. He is a child of the Gods, although his parents would say he is the illegitimate child of Gods, neither of them claiming, as children, an iota of their son's irrevocable lustre.

"What the hell are we gonna do with a popular kid?" his mother once asked in all earnestness.
"I dunno," answered her equally flummoxed husband.

Apparently neither of them had darkened the doorstep of apex popularity in school. But had Brad Pitt? When he was little Brad Stinky Peach Pit, did the curtains part on the 2nd grade play to reveal a child of the heavens, so brimming with that certain je ne sais quois, that parents and teachers alike nudged each other in their seats, and whispered over their betamax camcorders, "That kid's gonna go far." I know from personal experience that I stayed strapped to my seat in the theater, after Thelma and Louise took the plunge, to wait through the credits so that I might catch a glimpse of That Cowboy's name.

"Wait, just wait a second longer," I pleaded with my cousin who was more than ready to go.
"I just want to see," and then I saw it, "There! Brad Pitt. Huh. Brad Pitt. OK, we can go now."

The next time I did that consciously was when I happened across the Democratic National Convention on TV a thousand years ago. "Wait just a minute longer," I pleaded with my right hand which was twitching on the remote.
"I just want to know," and then I heard it, Barak Obama. Huh. Barak Obama. OK, we can change channels now.

What do you do when your child always gets an extra loop on the pony ride? How do you explain to your son that it's not like this for all children. That not all little boys and girls get an extra scoop on his or her single serving ice cream cone then get to live out the rest of their childhoods like miniature rock stars. But such is the way the world has always worked since Darwin allowed the first caveman with two distinct eyebrows. The fancier the feathers, the more fawning one elicits, the more action one gets, the more doors that swing open. And if handled properly, like kryptonite or radium, the arrangement of those feathers, as he becomes an adult, may bring the world's oyster right to his feet.

I'll always wonder if the charisma of some of our most exquisitely chiseled celebrities, Paul Newman for example, was fully in play as a child. It would have to be to explain how someone might be so comfortable with their own skin, so supremely confident as a man, as to marry his wise crakin', right-back-atchya banterin' muse until death did he part. Or to run for student council president and then President president without looking back or pausing for a second thought. Sure, it may take cahones to run, but, let's face it, it takes charisma to win.

A teacher of mine once defined charisma as, "Not giving a damn." He kept saying over and over, "The truly successful, the ones with charisma, their secret is that they don't give a damn. Stop caring what anyone thinks, for chrissake!" This would explain, in a nutshell, my meteoric rise to stunning obscurity and Angelina Jolie's to Brad Pitt.

And the lucky ones with looks, brains and charisma? Well, let's just say that I'll be registering my son's pal's name as a web domain just to get a leg up on the competition. And I'll teach myself to say, "I knew him when," in seven different languages. Oh, calm down, I'm not out to profit from this genetic jackpot of a super nice and totally delightful child. I'll leave that to his parents-- (just kidding, they're friends of mine.) And I promise to sell his domain name, licensing rights and registered trade mark back to him when he turns eighteen or when his parents say he's old enough to take the reigns, which ever comes first. He can pay me two dollars. One for each dimple.