Ferreting out the 4-year olds

When Mayor de Blasio inaugurated free, full-day prekindergarten classes citywide in 2013, the analysts helped pinpoint thousands of eligible 4-year-old children by cross-matching birth records, anonymous social-service information and commercial marketing data for diaper services. –  Wall Street Journal.

Scene: Police station. Giant map on the wall. Men in shirtsleeves and suspenders striding briskly in and out through  frosted-glass doors.  Berwilda, the only woman, sits at a computer. Suddenly an alarm goes off and the screen flashes.

Berwilda: Hey, boys, I think we’ve got one! Marketing data from diaper services has just come through!

Everybody: (Crowding around the computer) Where, where?

Berwilda: (Pointing to the screen) Here’s where the signal’s coming from.

Riley: Aw,  that’s the place we busted yesterday.  False alarm. Just a woman buyin’ Pampers for her old poodle.

Boris: (Darkly) For what she said was her old poodle.

Riley: You mean — it could have been a 4-year old in disguise?

Tyrone: Only one way to find out. Get Confidential Informant #A4590 on the phone.

Berwilda: Yessir. (Dials phone).

Speakerphone: Lollipop Garden Anonymous Social Services, may I help you?

Riley: We need some data chop-chop.

Lollipop: What did Little Miss Muffet sit on?

Riley: What the hell’s that supposed to mean?

Tyrone: That’s the security question, dummy.

Riley: Oh. Uh – a wishing well?

Lollipop: Wrong.

Riley:  (To the others) What did  *%# Miss Muffet sit on?

Lollipop: You get one hint. It rhymes.

Boris: I know!  A fluffet.

Lollipop: Wrong. Whoever heard of sitting on a fluffet?

All: Pluffet? Shuffet? Zuffet? Ruffet?

Lollipop hangs up.

Tyrone: Well, boys, I guess you know what this means. It’s an all-nighter of cross-matching birth records.

Boris: Why don’t we just bring in the poodle? They won’t suspect a thing until it starts first grade.

All concur.