Before I start, Not Your Average Blogger's travel photos are up over at Flickr. Go take a look.
The YP has shown a couple of particular talents from an early age. He is a total media junkie, and he has a fantastic ear for music. Since he was 2, I think he's been able to hear a song once and then sing it on key with all the correct lyrics for hours. He sings TV theme songs. We can't walk through Borders these days without him singing the theme from Mad Men. He has a great memory for dialog and will quote movies and commercial slogans ad nauseam.
I think I've written in the past about how these proclivities color his paradigm. The toys he loves best are action figures from movies. All his Halloween costumes since he's been able to pick them out have been movie or cartoon characters. (This year? He's a Ghostbuster. I think he has determined he is Bill Murray and NYAB will be Harold Ramis. Possibly something to do with the glasses.)
One of the tasks his first-grade teacher assigns each day is for the kids to "draw and write about something that really happened to you." When we saw his booklet, I cracked up, because the entries were basically, "This is me watching Star Wars." "This is me watching Back to the Future." "This is me at the theater watching Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3-D." "This is me playing with my Dark Knight toys." "This is me playing Indiana Jones on my DS." Occasionally interspersed are things like him playing golf with his dad or going to a concert, but the entries are at least 3-1 in favor of video.
Of course, he gets egged on by his daddy. Last night I came home from helping clean up the grade-school's bingo party, and the lads were sacked out on the couches watching Star Trek. I walk in and NYAB is not only reciting the lines along with the show, he also treats me to a tutorial on the old vs. new phasers (fazers? You'll have to ask him,) and tricorders and blah de fricking blah and I just sat and pointed and laughed and marveled he'd ever made it out of his parents' basement. He pointed out they didn't have a basement and threw a pillow at me. The Young Gene Roddenberry shushed us both.
While this occasionally depresses me insomuch as his creativity seems pathetically stunted and most of his play has to do with being Batman's sidekick rather than slaying dragons, for the most part I'm OK with it. He does still play, he is still reasonably competitive and now that he's in school and he still reads books, though he's not as keen on it as I might like.
What's interesting now, though, is how he is synthesizing all this exposure and knowledge. He's keen on making sequels to movies he likes. He makes up stories that are in keeping with his favorite characters. He has gotten to the point where he recognizes movie references out of context and in other movies.
But the kicker came the other day when we were in the car. He was uncharacteristically quiet and I asked what he was thinking about. He pops out with, "Well, I was just thinking that if I ever work on a Who Framed Roger Rabbit movie, mine should really include the Pixar guys."
Oy. I live with a pint-sized Dawson Leery, y'all. Except mine has a better forehead.
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