Dear C,
Touching as it is to hear how your eldest is blossoming at boarding school, I think the real lesson you should be asking is, how soon can I wrest him back so that he can re-sit fifth grade with the President-elect's oldest? Who cares that he just graduated middle school? As you suggest, no public school system on earth can possibly offer the same bragging rights that come with collecting your child from a slumber party in the Lincoln bedroom. And as long as you claim he is either a) specially gifted or b) rescued from an orphanage that burned down, along with his birth records, no-one will dare challenge you about his age. And besides, aren't half the privately-educated school children in DC held back to give them an edge in their applications to Harvard?
If I sound at all bitter, dear C, it is because my twins are forced to look at your cherubs' networking opportunities from the other side of the educational tracks. I may have learned to talk a good game about the public school system (learning how to lock up one's valuables or deal with a knife-wielding bully all being useful things to learn in the etiquette school of life), but as someone whose mantra is 'you get what you pay for,' I would be the first to concur that the connections both you and your child can make at DC's private schools are indeed priceless.
P.
