GENIUS

Today I'm going to tell you a little bit about the Boy.(Yeah, you're Gifted all right, Stunt Boy!)

He's kinda smart. I think he gets it from Jethro. I ain't so smart. Not like him anyways.

He's ten. When he was in Kindergarten, all of four years old, he would draw pictures of the space shuttle and give them lovingly to his teacher.

Once he drew the funniest picture of the space shuttle heading skywards, while the tank and boosters still stood on the lauch pad, with question marks around them. OH MY LORD. I'm snickering just thinking about it. He was FIVE!

I don't actually know if he's in the genius range but I would think not, simply because there aren't many true geniuses. Genii? Genia? Also, every mother thinks her drooling idiot is a genius so my opinion can't be trusted.

I have done some observing though...and he's not totally normal. For example, his favourite books include "Electricity One-Seven" and "Internal Combustion Engine Basics" and I'm not kidding about that. He's also a certified Dragonologist.

He's wearing his curly blonde hair in a sort of modified mullet for the last year. However, he asked me recently, with a devilish glint in his eye, if I could buy him a pocket protector.




Also you may remember that I bribed him into cutting his fingernails by promising to paint his fingernails black.

I've come to the conclusion that he's not extremely NORMAL...and I'm so relieved!

So, he's in a different school now where he's attending the full time GIFTED program. We have gotten large comedy out of this. Ask the Boy if he's gifted and he instantly goes into a droopy eyed overbite face, emitting the sound of DUH and sometimes even busting out some drool for effect.

Let me tell you about the Gifted Program Open House last spring.

Um...I can't. Most of it went over my head.

What I do remember is the amount of obnoxious parents. Wow. Tell a guy his kid's gifted and watch his chest puff up. Not in an athletic kind of way, just in a smug, condescending chest puffing kind of way. So this one Dad type guy asks a question pertaining to the statistical successes of students from the gifted program in university and post university blah blah blah. My imaginary ADD was acting up at this point, making it difficult for me to concentrate when those pictures of Johnny Depp screen printed onto my zip up hoodie were so much more interesting, but I perked up my ears for the answer. "There is no correlation between gifted program success and university success. In fact very few of these students will go on to university."

HA! I knew it! Smug Dad deflated into his plastic chair and I went back to my examination of the Johnny picture with the Zoot suit and the horn rimmed glasses. University. I had a hard time convincing this kid to go to GRADE THREE let alone the struggle I anticipate with VOLUNTARY POST SECONDARY SCHOOLING!

From what I've seen, great intelligence usually come with unbearable restlessness. It's very difficult for a school system to satisfy the curiosity and often the smart-assiness that comes with kids like this.

Please understand, I am not against University education and I know that there are plenty of great brains in such a place. I also believe that there are a lot of stupid people there, whose parents have enough money to ram the kid through school until he gets some kind of degree, and will go on to represent your legal case or stitch your guts back together.

Most truly intellectual kids, due to lack of a worthy education and their own boredom, sadly, end up in jail. Or in rock bands. Trying to avoid both destructive paths, we opted to put the Boy in a program that will stimulate him.

Apparently geeks are hot stuff these days. I punched the phrase "geek chic" into Images and got this:

"Seth Cohen" aka Adam Brody. How cute is this kid? I see his face on teenie mags any time I'm in a checkout line so he must be getting lots of acting gigs...







I punched "smart guy" in and got this:
Jon Stewart












...and let's not forget....