Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World

by Naomi Klein

I was so tired for him. The perfection Olympics in which this father-daughter duo were clearly excelling seemed like a terribly sad thing to do to childhood. This little one was already luminous—she did not need to be polished into a trophy. But if I was honest, I also could see how, if I had a child who navigated the world with such ease, it would be nearly impossible to resist the temptation to live through them and try to win all the prizes our brutal economic order has to offer the few deemed merit-worthy. It was in that moment that I realized the special gift of having a child whose innate differences meant that he was never going to be able to compete in that race. By then, he was already on his own field, making his own rules—cool rules, ones that might lead to some very interesting places when he is older—but rules that he alone could decode. I looked at T. as he joyfully if clumsily slid down the plastic slide and blessed him for giving us both this off-ramp.