2.  She can get any boy she wants. Well, maybe not ANY boy, but she could probably get the boy I want. Who, sadly, is my sister’s boyfriend. But whatever.

And the number-one reason I wish I were Gwen Stefani:

1.  She doesn’t have to take art lessons with Susan Boone.

Theresa was the one who ended up driving me to the art studio after school the next day.

Theresa is used to chauffeuring us around, though. She has been with our family since we got back from Morocco. She does everything my parents are too busy working to do: drive us places, clean the house, do the laundry, cook the meals, buy the groceries.

Not, of course, that we don’t have to help out. For instance, I am completely in charge of Manet and everything to do with him, since I’m the one who wanted a dog so badly. Rebecca has to set the table, I clear it and put away the leftovers, while Lucy loads the dishwasher.

It mostly works out—if Theresa is supervising. If Theresa’s gone home for the night, things generally get a little messy. One of her unofficial duties is exacting discipline in our family, since Mom and Dad, in the words of Horizon, Rebecca’s school, sometimes “fail to set appropriate limits” for us kids.

On the way to Susan Boone’s that first day, Theresa was totally setting some limits. She was on to the fact that I had every intention of bolting the minute she drove away.

“If you think, Miss Samantha,” she was saying as we crawled down Burrito Alley, which is what people are calling Dupont Circle since lately so many burrito and wrap places have popped up all along it, “that I am not going in with you, you have another think coming.”

This is one of Theresa’s favorite expressions. I taught it to her. And it really is “another think coming,” not “ thing.” It’s a Southern saying. I got it out of To Kill a Mockingbird. I have worked very hard to acclimatize Theresa to our culture, since when she first started working for us she had just arrived here from Ecuador and didn’t know squat about anything to do with America.