You know you're in America when...

... your child gets a letter which is a personalized invitation to join in the National American Miss competition. Yay! My child has been selected for a Beauty Pageant!

I’m rather thrilled about this, as I feel I wouldn’t really have had the whole Living-in-America experience without it. It would be like going to New York and not eating a bagel, or London and not seeing Big Ben, or moving to the suburbs and not being invited to a Tupperware party. So I feel I’ve arrived. Yay!

The letter opens:

I understand that you may enjoy modeling, acting and learning stage techniques that will help empower and enable you to accomplish your future goals.

Ah, thank goodness for that. I thought these pageants were just for aspiring beauty queens. It continues:

National American Miss is a pageant experience designed for you, today’s girl; that’s why we do not have a swimsuit competition, we have a no make-up rule for participants age 12 and under, and you are not required to have a talent.

Phew. We wouldn’t want to rule out anyone just because they are entirely untalented. (And I do understand that it’s a talent, not just talent, before anyone points this out to me; I just thought it was funny when I read it.)

So what does my little darling, talented or untalented, have to do in order to have a chance of winning $25,000, modeling contracts, college scholarships, or a 2009 Ford Mustang convertible? Well, the letter gives details of where we can go for an Open Call session, where

you will have the opportunity to make new friends with girls from across your home state who have interests similar to yours, and also to gain self-confidence and valuable communication skills.

It gives details of the age groups, including the “Princess” category for age 4 – 6, and the “Junior Pre-Teen” for age 7 – 9, (which means that your kid can be “Junior Pre-Teen” pretty much as they leave Kindergarten. Mm, nice.)

The final paragraph helpfully provides a few tips:

First, dress for success! Come dressed as you would for a job interview.

Um, my child hasn’t been to many job interviews yet…

Before you hurry to advise me on what attire would be suitable for a child in this situation, whether they aspire to be in modeling, acting, or simply to attain a new level of self-confidence, I have to say that we won’t be pursuing this fabulous opportunity. Why not? Well, just one small glitch. The letter is addressed to 8-yo, my youngest son.

And what is it with blogging, by the way? I write a post about boys and self-confidence, and then this National American Miss letter arrives for 8-yo the very next morning. Am I in some cyber version of The Truman Show? This isn’t the first time this kind of coincidence has happened. Does it happen to the rest of you? Is it that we are more attuned to events in our lives that we have just written about, and that makes us spot connections more readily? Or is there some spooky blogger puppeteer out there pulling the strings in my little blogger life? (If there is, I don’t want to know about it.)