There's Still Hope!!

How many of you have had conversations with your friends hypothesizing how crazy things will be when our children are growing up? Well, after hanging out with my girlfriend's 12-year-old son, I'm convinced that there's still hope! It had been a while since I saw J., but we had time to catch up as we waited for his mother who had been held up in a meeting.

If you are like me, you have completely forgotten what ages correspond with what grades--for inquiring minds, 12-years-old = 8th grade.

So, the first thing J. told me was that he had just won the school Geography Bee and last week he won the History Project Competition. On April 4th, he'll compete to be 1 of 33 DC youth vying for a spot in the National Geography Bee!! Honestly, J. totally blew me away. He is fascinated by every subject and loves learning new things.

I was trying to help him memorize countries and capitals and told him that it would be easy to remember that the capital of Uganda is Kampala b/c that's where I'm from!! His mother informed me today that he told her he will always remember the capital of Uganda b/c he has a friend (me) from there. :-)

J. was quizzing me on things like who was the 43rd President of the U.S and how many knots are in a league? Ummmmm.... yeah. In a way, I felt like I was working on a Mensa quiz, but was also digging the challenge. We played a math game and hangman -- it has been I while since I've played hangman, so I needed a quick refresher. The word that J. selected was, 'antidisestablishmentarism.' If you can imagine, I had a bit of difficulty guessing this word.

The bottom line is that J. is an extremely well-rounded, independent, intelligent, loving kid that is not too cool to say, "I love you mom" in public. When I was in 8th grade, my priorities were a bit different, so it's nice to see that with every generation of youth, there are always those special kids that go against the grain.

The world better watch out for J., that's all I'm saying.

Challenge for Love, Life and Work Readers: What does antidisestablishmentarism mean?