I have a suggestion. Ruminate on the indignities of childhood for a while. It will cheer you up to realize that you don't have to put up with them anymore. A trade-off, if you will.

Indignities of childhood - injections in the bottom. rectal thermometers. teachers who scold and then tell you you are bad for defending yourself. big kids who tease. being sent to bed when a good party is going on. not being able to see the Lennon sisters because it's bathtime.

On a more serious note, the paper had an article today about a woman who set a pile of clothes on fire inside an apartment and left, leaving her five-year-old stepson in the apartment. (She was angry at her husband, the boy's father.) She told police that she left the child behind because she wasn't his mother and didn't have the right to take him.

How's that for indignity?