The Big DumpTruck

I'm sure someone will bring me down a peg or two, but allow me this small parental gloat, would you?

My kid is good at math.

I laugh when I call him Doogie, but deep in my heart, I want him to go to college at 16 even if it means two fewer years in which to save money for tuition. If he gets into college at 16, I'm pretty sure he'll qualify for a scholarship.

It started when he was about 20 months old (I think that's how old he was at the time, I can check) and he could count to thirteen. Sometimes he missed seven, but not often. That's pretty good for a 20 month old.

So he starts first grade in September, and the other night he was adding together two four-digit numbers. Actually, he did a six-digit number too. We stuck with those you don't have to carry anything over to the next column, just to get him used to doing it. He's so cool. I was not a math person. Math people go far in life.

He's better at addition than subtraction, but he has potential. He understands the concept, I just think he's got more addition memorized. Throw out six plus five and he'll quickly give you back an eleven. Without using fingers and toes! So if this is normal for a 6-year-old kindergarten graduate, I'm sorry I took up your valuable time. But I'm still pretty proud of him.

In a related note, I'm suddenly disturbed by the fact that Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, is in the same public school classroom as the stupid kids. If he's THAT smart, does he really belong in the same class as Sheen and Carl? Do Miss Fowl's math lessons actually stimulate his brain at all? You can see how this would bother me.