“Wow!!!!” “Congrats!” “Next step: New York Times crossword puzzle!”

I began receiving such texts on Friday, after achieving the modern-day equivalent of immortality: I became a clue on Jeopardy!.

The category was “Points of View,” and the clue was this: “Lenore Skenazy, who wrote of letting her 9-year-old right the NYC subway alone, moved this term from raising chickens to raising kids.”

If you can’t guess the answer, there’s a clue at the top of this article.

So, how does one become a Jeopardy! clue? It’s easy: Just let your kid do something the world considers dangerous, then write a column about why the world is wrong. Then write some more columns about it, appear on every possible talk show in defense of yourself, and then graciously accept the nickname “America’s Worst Mom.“

Then, start a blog about the issue and give it a catchy name, manage to trademark said name (shout out to Dale Cendali, America’s top intellectual property lawyer and my dear friend from college), and write a book with the same title. Next, you have to speak at about a million schools, as well as corporate behemoths like Microsoft and DreamWorks. Perhaps most importantly, write to Matt Welch at Reason, out of the blue, and propose yourself as a columnist.

In fact, I recently rediscovered that first letter to Reason, which began:

So if you want to be on Jeopardy!—Jeopardy! Masters, actually—and have the contestant answer the clue correctly, just dedicate about 16 years to one specific topic and all its strange and infuriating ramifications, become the world’s leading expert on the topic, and write for Reason!

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