My friend Juliet told me a story about her daughter a while ago. Juliet explained how they recently had a party at their apartment and several of their guests congregated on their deck to admire the view. A couple of them lit up cigarettes.

Juliet's four year-old daughter, Claire, spotted the smokers and ran to her mother.

"Mommy!" Claire whispered loudly, "They're cigaretting!"

Juliet rolled her eyes at this part of the story and said to me, "My daughter is such a narc."

I sympathized with Juliet because there's little doubt that my daughter Daisy will be right there on Narc Patrol with Claire. One of Daisy's favorite activities, for example, is to walk around our neighborhood and identify all the cars that have expired registration stickers. She'll note which cars have complied with registration procedures, which are on the verge of non-compliance, and which ones are just scum-of-the-earth registration scofflaws.

Daisy just LOVES this kind of stuff. She came home from school the other day quite pleased.

Me: Hey, how was school, baby?
Daisy: Great! Fantastic!
Me: Wow. Cool.
Daisy: On a scale from 1 to 10, it was an 8,000! AND IT'S STILL CLIMBING!
Me: Dang! That's quite a day. What made it so good?
Daisy: Well, my teacher, Miss Smith, she had to leave the classroom for a few minutes, so she had to pick someone to be in charge while she was gone AND SHE PICKED ME! I WAS IN CHARGE!
Me: I see. I take it you liked that.
Daisy: Oh. Oh, yes.

Teaching this kid to question authority ain't gonna be easy.