Advertisement

Column: Tantrum at the White House

 
Denied her “sheet-dress,” Claudia appeals to a higher power.
Denied her “sheet-dress,” Claudia appeals to a higher power.
Published Nov. 19, 2015

My 2-year-old daughter Claudia is usually easygoing by toddler standards, except in the mornings when she demands to strip off all her clothes and don nothing but a fitted dinosaur sheet. ("It's not a sheet!" she screams. "It's a sheet-dress!") Somehow, over the course of a few days last spring, this unassuming little person became the star of the Internet news cycle.

It was early April, and we had for once negotiated her into a dress-dress and escorted her to the White House to have her picture taken with the president before the annual Passover Seder. Claudia had no interest in this ritual. She didn't want to be in the White House, whatever that was. She wanted to be in her bedroom, emptying out the drawers of her changing table in search of more sheets.

"I take off my shoes," she told me.

"No, sweetie, not right now."

"I take off my dress," she suggested next.

"Claudia, if you could just wait one second —"

"I wear a sheet-dress."

"I'm so sorry, sweet girl, but we didn't bring any sheets tonight!"

My lack of preparation outraged her. That same instant, the hush associated with the entrance of the chief executive fell over the Red Room, but Claudia didn't care. Claudia wanted a sheet, and she wanted one now. In her fury, she threw herself at the feet of the most famous man in the world.

The explosion ended, my father whisked Claudia and her brother off, and that was that. We thought no more of the tantrum until almost two months later when the White House photo office emailed me a photograph of the incident "for personal use only."

The photograph was wonderful, obviously, but it didn't for an instant occur to me that it would interest anyone beyond my circle of family and friends. My brother tweeted the photo. As I pored over the on-line comments that followed, I was reminded that actual living humans are reduced to Grumpy Cat memes as every day the Internet offers up new canvasses where other people can project their fears and loathings.

For the meme herself, three days after my brother's tweet, she woke up and announced that she was done with diapers. It was as if, as an international Internet celebrity, she suddenly felt compelled to up her game. And that was news I could use.

© 2015 Slate