So, last night I’m at a friend’s book party in one of those unbelievable Chelsea lofts—the kind that seem to employ some Tardis-like technology for allowing small-seeming buildings to encompass infinite space—when I am approached by a towheaded 5-year-old. He’s raging on sugar or adrenaline, scampering around the room in full knowledge that he’s fucking adorable, but he stops at me and grins, his mouth crammed with little-kid teeth.

He puts out his hand. He wants me to give him five. I do. Then he crawls under my legs, turns around, and… spanks me. Weird. Then off he darts through the crowd, returning minutes later to smack my butt again. Weird.

Weird but normal. This is a game, and I’m a willing participant. The thing is, how did he find me? How did he single me out of all the other guys there and know that, yes, I’m a dad who knows how to play silly games like this? Is this similar to Chris’s “I, Hot Chick” phenomenon, where I now have some fatherly aura visible only to children?

Anyway, what makes this extra-weird is that I used to be kind of, well, scared of kids. I always imagined they were looking at me and trying to figure out what to make of me. Well, he looks like a grown-up, sure, but he really gives off this immature, little-kid affect. What’s his deal?

Later at the party, I met the kid’s parents, who ordered him to stop racing around and spanking me. Which was a disappointment: I wanted to corner him and dare him to spank every single person at the party—a dare I know I would’ve enjoyed at his age.

And so, well, maybe it wasn’t the daddy he saw in me. Maybe he recognized a fellow ass-whacker?