I have recently started reading “The Lost Princess” (aka “The Wise Woman”, “A Double Story” and several other titles) by George MacDonald out loud to my daughter. Usually over tea or a snack.

The pertinent quote:

“As she grew up, everybody about her did his best to convince her that she was Somebody; and the girl herself was so easily persuaded of it that she quite forgot that anybody had ever told her so, and took it for a fundamental, innate, primary, first-born, self-evident, necessary, and incontrovertible idea and principle that SHE WAS SOMEBODY. And far be it from me to deny it. I will even go so far as to assert that in this odd country there was a huge number of Somebodies. Indeed, it was one of its oddities that every boy and girl in it, was rather too ready to think he or she was Somebody; and the worst of it was that the princess never thought of there being more than one Somebody—and that was herself.”

As we finished the chapter, E. looked up at me and said, “I am Somebody!”

“Yeah?” I said, then held my breath to keep from dictating what would come next. I wanted to know what she would do with that information of her own volition. Will she get it?

“You’re Somebody! My dad is Somebody!”

Then later, when a younger and more wild friend hit her repeatedly in the head, she wisely said, “He’s Somebody. But he forgot I’m Somebody.”

I like my kid.