about a boy

Today, I marvel at my son Greyson's quick wit and phenomenal memory.

While volunteering at his school this morning, I got to sit in on a discussion about dinosaurs. The teacher would ask a child to name a dinosaur and talk about something they knew about the dinosaur. Greyson, when called on, named the velociraptor, and said it ran really fast. Then he said, "But I can run SO fast!", illustrating with his hands. The teacher asked him which could run fastest, Greyson or the velociraptor. After a moment's thought, he answered that of course he could run faster ... because the velociraptor is extinct! I admired the quickness and accuracy of the answer, and the fact that he had clearly put some thought into the question. (It's a lot of extrapolation, but I like that he's showing signs of an interest in scholarship and deductive reasoning. Bodes well for his future as an interesting dinner-table companion!)

Over the course of our long trip a few months ago, Lou and I were both blown away by the breadth of Grey's memory. This trip occurred about two weeks after a terrible accident (which Grey later admitted he had caused) happened that put Lou's laptop out of commission. Lou's laptop is known in Greyson's world as the keeper of Titan Quest, a computer game. Grey is obsessed with said game, and has about 13 different characters (give or take a few), all at different levels of the game and with different skill sets. When quizzed in the middle of a trip, weeks away from having been able to play the game, Greyson could still remember each one of his characters, their level, where they had stopped in the game, and their skill sets. Imagine having that level of recall!

On the same trip, he surprised both of us a couple of times. During a stop in the hometown of Lou's alma mater, we asked Greyson if he knew where we were. He nodded wisely and said, "We're in college." Neither of us remembered making a big deal out of that, or really telling him a lot about Lou's college experience. And when asked how he knew, he looked at us and said, "Uh, multitalented?" Which is code for "I don't remember/I'm not going to tell you". And is always said in a very "duh" tone of voice. Later that same day, we pulled off the highway, following our GPS to the hotel we were staying in that night. As we started down the offramp, Greyson said, "Oh, I've been here!" And he kept saying, "I've been to this place." As we paid our toll and moved onto the main street, I realized that he was right—we had been there! When he was just over 2, we'd made the same trip, and had stayed in the same hotel ... and almost three years later, he not only remembered the hotel, but also remembered the offramp. Scary stuff, a small boy's memory. If only there was some way to harness that power and use it for good...