I'm Hooked on Billboards!

Today my dad was holding his 4 month old niece, and remarking about how she was getting talkative, nosey and figuring out how her hands worked and things. He began reminiscing, telling my "aunt/cousin" stories about when I was younger. I have always been a big fan of games and one of my favorites was Memory. He claims that even when I was younger I wasn't one of those kids who would cheat like my 3 year nephew does at Candy Land. I'm not sure it's cheating, really. He is mainly focused on getting the cards with the characters on them. Whether it moves him ahead or behind isn't that important to him. I, on the other hand, really tried to win and a lot times I would beat him even when he was trying. He didn't have to throw the game to save my feelings. I could handle it myself. I did however have to get the bunny match or I would cry.

He went on to tell about how he started a game with me when we were in the car to learn my letters. We would try to find letters on billboards and license plates we passed by. This made me learn how to read a little early. It was a tad inconvenient when my grandmother wanted to hide things from me. He remembers her doing the thing where you spell out a secret to disguise something from the youngins. My dad could see the gears turning in my brain. When I figured it out, the lightbulb came on and I told her, "You can't fool me, gram. I know what you are talking about!"

To teach me to count, he would let me count his coins in his pockets every night and if I didn't mess up I could have them all to put in my piggy bank. If I did mess up he would put them up in a dish on his dresser and I didn't cash in that day. He told the story before about one night when he was downstairs watching T.V on the couch after work. He noticed the pitter- patter of my little mischievous feet. He could hear that I was going from my room into theirs and back again repeatedly. He began to put two and two together and hollered up to me asking what I was up to. I didn't want to be found out so answered with the typical kid answer of "NOTHING!" He knew that almost certainly always means "SOMETHING!" I had been going into his change dish and robbing him of his loot one coin at a time and scampering my treasure back to my room and dropping it straight into my piggy bank like a squirrel stacking nuts for the winter.

I guess I was a precocious child as my aunt Carol has told me. She tells me I even had an unusual number of teeth early as well as my other abilities and thought that was remarkable. The fascination probably has far less to do with me being an exceptional child and more to do with the fact that I was the first niece and grandchild born in the family so people took more notice of things then they do when the 6th grandchild is developing amidst the older 5 making a ruckus and running amuck. I certainly don't think myself a genius by any stretch of the imagination.

It does make me wonder though... do we really want to buy things like "Hooked on Phonics" or "Your Baby Can Read"? Kids these days already seem far smarter then the generation before them with all the technology at their fingertips. It's to the point where parents can't help their children do their homework past the 4th grade. I mean, we have a game show on T.V entitled "Are You Smarter Then A 5th Grader?" and I haven't seen many winners yet. If back then I had the idea to rob my dad of his jingle because I was so smart from our little game of "Hooked on Billboards", just think the heist that a preschooler could pull off these days with things like "Baby Einstein" to get them started even earlier! We are breading a generation of brilliant criminals starting before they can wipe themselves so we had better stay on our toes.