My daughter is a born leader. Some kids just are. Thankfully, she is one of those benevolent dictators, and she knows just how to step into a situation and take control. I knew all this, of course. In fact, I have alternately marveled over this, talked to her about this, and spoken to my husband about this "Handle With Care" gift of hers for many years now. On the one hand, it makes her Queen Bee, at the top of the heap. On the other hand, it's painful when she's upended, which happens every once in awhile.

But I never realized the extent of her ruling powers and also the extent of her doting fans. Until yesterday.

"Right my hair is like yours?" Friend A asks, a look of agonizing hopefulness etched clear across her face. "It's like yours but it doesn't look exactly like yours, but it's still like yours, right?"

My heart catches in my throat, like a hairpin, stuck.

"Right," my daughter agrees good-naturedly. She cannot possibly grasp the depth of Friend A's longing. This, I know.

They go outside to play. I hover near them. They are discussing Purim costumes, what they will dress up as. My daughter casually says she wants to be a butterfly (Note: This is a rerun from last year Purim--I get to actually save money!) this year. Immediately, Friend A and Friend B jump in on the idea.

"Let's ALL be butterflies this year!" they clamor. My daughter considers the proposal.

And then my heart really does flip-flops.

Friend B says, "YOU'LL be the Queen Butterfly and we'll be your butterfly servants!"

There is such raw humility in the concept. My daughter is oblivious to this. She excitedly informs me that she, as queen, will have a huge butterfly painted across her face while her two friends-slash-maids will have small butterflies painted on their cheeks.

What makes some kids the queens and others the maids? How do these friends fall in so naturally to that role while my daughter exudes so much power and unhesitating confidence? It stymies me, worries me, excites and horrifies me.

I can't really relate. I was always one of the followers, pining for a chance to get two small butterflies on my cheeks.

My neighbor calls me up. She's got seminary girls who need a meal and can I host them? And "Oh," she says, "When they heard that my neighbor is Riva Pomerantz, they REALLY wanted to go to you for a meal."

Well, that's encouraging. It's Thursday night. I have deadlines to meet, Shabbos cooking to finish, and I committed to giving a Friday night shiur for neighborhood women. But there are seminary girls coming and they "REALLY want to go to Riva Pomerantz for a meal."

I recently met a young woman--very sweet, very nice; we chatted together for a little while. Nothing special. Then, in the course of the conversation, she happens to mention that she is the daughter of a spiritual "celebrity" in the chareidi world. Bam! Presto Change-o! All of a sudden she's interesting, she sparkles, the conversation becomes animated and compelling! Of course, I could just about whack myself on the side of the head for this really inexcusable behavior. Is this girl the sum total of her well-known father?! Does the expectation instantly rise when I discover her fame? The astute observer will predict very quickly where this is going...

Am I the sum total of my writing? Is there an expectation of some brilliant wow factor that will immediately electrify the atmosphere of our Shabbos meal together as these seminary girls look on with awe? Will my kids behave like perfect little angels? Will my house be spotless? Will I serve a five-course gourmet meal and a complex, Rich's whip-laden confection for dessert? What expectations lie behind the words "When they heard that my neighbor is Riva Pomerantz, they REALLY wanted to go to you for a meal." Am I any different a person than BEFORE I became a writer? Ask my mother. I don't think so.

See this is where my mind becomes a dangerous neighborhood. There's a line that line that goes something like "I am the person you think I think you think I am". Who says these girls are expecting Perfectionville? Maybe these girls think writers are dirty, disorganized people (now we're approaching Reality city limits!), live in tiny, dank closets, and they beat their children with long, wooden pens. Maybe they think I'll have wrinkles and a toothless grin and I'll serve them a meager meal of dry, tasteless challah and a bit of chicken. Ya never know!

Or MAYBE they think I'm just a regular, normal mother-wife-daughter who happens to have a cool job and they have no expectations whatsover. Hmmmm....

Well guess what, guys--I just burned the gefilte fish. 

My fervent plea is that this blogpost come off as enlightening and thought-provoking, not judgmental or self-righteous. Amen. What a great preamble, huh?!

On Thursday my husband and I were grocery shopping together (Yeah, that's our idea of a great date, okay!) and our overcrowded cart overflowed with the only casualties a battered box of matzah and a plastic container of tomato salad which exploded all over the floor. So being that I'm way beyond getting embarrassed by these types of mishaps (!), I calmly stayed behind at the scene of the crime while my husband went to customer service to ask them to send a cleaner. Why did I stay at the spill site? Hmmmm....Let's see. I guess I would call it a very crude form of social responsibility. Tomato sauce all over the floor....People all over the floor....Right?

Now the fallen tomato sauce is only the side-dish in the story. The entree is my fellow Jewess shopping in Aisle One. I'm standing in the checkout line. This middle-aged shopper is selecting shampoo. And...oops! Gravity claims yet another victim--a bottle of Pantene conditioner (Yes, they have Pantene in Israel!) explodes on the floor. Ouch, but that's life, right? But the splatters of conditioner now adorning the floor might as well be a red carpet rolled out for said shopper as she breezily wheels her cart right past the broken bottle, skirting the spill as she goes to locate the rest of her groceries.

And I? Horrified would be a good place to start.

Middos (character traits) are really, really, really, REALLY important. (Listen up, kids!) A person lacking the decency to at least alert customer service about a spill has an illness--a social illness. Who knows what other symptoms manifest themselves from this illness! I do. As God would have it, this wanton conditioner breaker (I, of course, am an un-wanton tomato-sauce-container breaker....but now I am starting to sound self-righteous...) happens to check out in the aisle next to me. There is a piece of paper in her cart, left behind by some careless individual. Wanton doesn't like the paper in her cart. It doesn't match the shopping bag theme. So what does she do? Well, what would YOU do if there was a piece of paper in YOUR cart? She crumples it up and hurls it onto the floor!! Yeah!

By this time "horrified" pales in comparison to all-out disbelief and, I dunno, what's worse than "horrified"? I asked my husband if I should say something to her. He gave me one of those "I'm taking no liability for this" answers and I, fuming, decided to take action. I picked up the paper from the floor and placed it on my own checkout bay. Wanton said nothing.

A few minutes into grocery hauling, Wanton asks the cashier for a piece of paper. She wants to write something down. Maybe she wants to write a letter of apology to anyone who may have slipped on the conditioner-greased floor. Cashier doesn't have a paper. I reach into the checkout bay and pull out...the crumpled paper I rescued from its disgrace on the floor. The same hand that hurled now grabs it from my outstretched fingers. Don't worry--she didn't say thank you.

I am not writing this to make fun of an individual. I am writing it to highlight the tragedy of bad middos. Bad middos are scary. They can injure people--physically and emotionally. And the scariest part is that many people with "Middos Disease" are not even aware of their illness. It's the fortunate person who knows him or herself enough to recognize which character traits need polishing.