Intelligent Life
© 2003
by
Jeff Stimpson
The other night, I came home and watched my sons
do these things:
-Alex pulled his toy keyboard out of the closet,
muttering "come-pew-ter, come-pew-ter ..." He searched the living room
before propping the keyboard at the base of the TV (just another kind
of monitor), then he typed madly while an Elmo video ran.
-Ned asked me for pennies to put in his piggy bank.
I fed him pennies until he'd dropped them all in the bank. When he saw
that I had no more pennies, he: 1) went to his mother's purse and got
a pen; 2) pulled the cap off the pen; 3) returned to his piggy bank
and flipped it over; and 4) used the sharp end of the pen to try to
pry open the trap door in the belly of his piggy bank.
-Ned threw his arms around me when I came home from
work and said, "Ohhh, daddy!" Before bed, Alex said, "I love you,
daddy," and kissed me good-night twice. Both boys, however, we also
getting sick.
I reported these incidents to Jill, who sat at the
real come-pew-ter. "Wow," is all she said, absently. She was having
trouble loading a Web page.
Alex and Ned have a combined age of 6. They're
already smarter than many people I've worked for. They know the phrase
"Wha' happened?" and the word "Hot!" (as in light bulb). From "A
Charlie Brown Christmas," they've learned Linus's sarcastic "Ho ho
ho," which Alex delivers just like John Belushi in that Saturday
Night Live skit about the wino Santa with cooties on his leg. Both
boys know they can get away with pulling open the baking utensil
drawer in the kitchen, but not the knife drawer. Both know to pull a
dining table chair over to get to the VCR -- amazing that they know
anything, given the amount of TV we let them watch -- and Alex knows
to request the Charlie Brown Halloween tape by saying, "PUMP-kin!" Ned
often tries to put the videotape in backwards, but so do most adults.
Perhaps because I dread the day when Ned surpasses
him, I give Alex's accomplishments a little more weight. One reader
pointed out that Alex's bedtime maneuvers, such as coyly asking me 50
times to check his "diapee," will intensify after he learns to use the
toilet and no longer wears a diaper. (I'll certainly pay more
attention...). His other accomplishments include surprising dexterity:
Once Alex pulled a glass cake platter out of its box and carried it
the length of the living room without so much as a ding. Another time,
he tripped over a floor lamp and set it wobbling; without even a
glance he shot out a hand and steadied the lamp. Alex knows the last
words on many pages of the "Tom and Pippo" books.
Not to sell Ned short. He talks without letup during
our bedtime reading sessions -- though he often sounds like Cousin It,
sooner or later he's going to hit on more words. He deliberately picks
out each evening's books, and always different ones. He helps pick up
socks from the floor of the laundry room. Jill reports that this
morning, when she broke her mixing bowl with a great crash, Ned dashed
into the kitchen, took one look at the fragments and made a loud, "Uh-ohhhhhhh!"
Ned can press the letters back in their slots of the big foam alphabet
puzzle. Alex has learned that to have a full bowl of pretzels, he has
to sit at the table and he can't walk around get crumbs everywhere.
Ned likes ballet videos. I like them a little better than Elmo, but I
still prefer Charlie Brown to either.
As the boys get most of their intelligence from
Jill, I want to put in a word about her here. Some of her more astute
recent comments include:
-"When you come in from the cold, the cocoa and the
warmth feel like comfort. When you come in from the heat, the air
conditioning feels like medicine."
-When I asked her during some tense moment why she
had to be "so completely disagreeable," she replied, "Well, I just
have to play to a strength!"
-She's also observed that the talking teddy bear in
Articial Intelligence walks like he just came out of the
bathroom, and that soft-boiled eggs may be "the most depressing food
ever invented."
Though I sort of dread the day when Alex and Ned
surpass me, at least Jill already has.
Copyright 2003 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
