Herewith are, with just two weeks left, some of the funnier things Simon has said this year, presented mostly without context because these gems stand alone:

*****

On eating and weight: “Simon, you eat more than I do some days!”

“I know. That’s why I’m growing east-west instead of north-south now.”

*****

On genteel habits: “Simon, did you remember to go to the bathroom before bed last night?”

“No, I think I forgot. I was holding my junk all night.”

*****

On life goals: “Do you think it would be exciting to score a goal with a bicycle kick?”

“Oh, Mommy, that’s my life’s dream.”

*****

On the danger of caloric excess: “Simon, why didn’t you eat your extra snack today?”

“Because I had enough energy from lunch. And I thought if I ate my snack and got even more energy, I might go crazy.”

*****

From kindergarten writing journal; on modesty and soccer: “I am rilly good at soccer because i have rilly good control and also i can take shots from very far away and score and i pass rilly well and i am rilly fast and I am rilly good at golly.”

*****

On bad parenting [Matt’s, not mine]: “Guess what mom? Today at sharing time, I shared about that day last week when you and Daddy were both out of the house and I was alone for 10 minutes. I bet I’m the only 6-year-old in the universe that’s been alone in their house! Mr. Sowder was kind of freaked out.” [So was mama; it won’t happen again.]

*****

“Do we know anyone from Greece?”

“My grad-school friend, Despina!”

“And Prometheus!”

*****

“Oh boy, there’s Jayla the love monster!” [I’d offer context, but does it really need any?]

*****

On Louisville’s unequal housing: “Man, a lot of houses in West Ham are messed up.” [This was said about some houses near Simon’s school, which is located in a poor part of Louisville’s West End. West Ham, on the other hand, is a London-based English soccer team. Given how much English soccer he watches, the confusion makes sense.]

*****

On patience: “But it’s already been, like, two milliseconds!”

*****

On being very tired: “Just so you know, Mommy, I’m already asleep.”

*****

On why boys are more fun than girls: [at Grandparents’ house, spoken to me and Evie] Simon: “Why won’t the boys come out?”

Evie: “Because they are silly and don’t want to get wet.”

Simon: “I wish they would. When it’s girls, it turns into talking ball.”

*****

On gender equity and work-life balance: “Yeah, Caroline will drive and change the baby’s diaper. We talked about it and decided she would do it. I might be a computer programmer and work from home. But I don’t want to. I’d rather be a professional soccer player. Then I’ll have to live in New York. But whatever.”

*****

From 1st grade journal, an essay on the invigorating experience of reading: “Reading makes me feel better because it is qwyit (quiet). Reading makes me feel better because I can fall asleep after it. Reading makes me feel better because I can lay doun (down) doing it. Reading makes me feel better because it is relacksing (relaxing).” (August or September 2013)

*****

On neologisms: “Oooo, that tastes like the future. That means it tastes good. I made it up.” (September 2013)

*****

Relating to our car accident, on the nature of aging and friendship: “Menelik said the same thing happened to his dad. They were in their car when a white car driven by some old person–you know, he was like 50 or something, but whatever–some old person hit them and they had to buy a new car. So he understands how we’re feeling. He empathizes with us.” (October 2013)

*****

On Asian geography: Simon: “What are some countries in Asia that don’t crack a million? There’s Cyprus and Bhutan, but what else?”

Me: “Maybe East Timor?”

Simon: “No, no. East Timor has like 1 or 2 million I think.” (it’s 1.5 million when I looked it up. Mama is so outclassed. October 2013.)

*****

Upon receiving a sports stats book for his birthday: “If you add sports and numbers together, you get double awesome.” (October)

*****

Upon requesting more time with a computer reading program: “Please, please, can I have some stoppage time?” (November)

*****

On a new friend from school: “Katie likes dolls and stuff like Caroline. Yeah, she’s like a version of Caroline except she chases me.” (November)

*****

On combining twin loves of math and geography: “The difference between Vietnam and Germany is Lebanon.” [Population of Vietnam is 86 m. Population of Germany is 82 m. Population of Lebanon is 4 m. 86-82=4.]

*****

An illustration of how out-classed I am math-wise: “Okay, Mommy. This will be my masterpiece. What is the US + Turkey?”

Me: “Okay. The US is about 350 million, and Turkey is around 78 mill—“

Simon: “No, Mommy. Turkey is 76 million. Wait. I got this one. The answer is . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . 426 million!”

Can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. Now I’m off to memorize my world populations so I don’t embarrass him!

I’ll start with the little thing. One day last week, Simon was playing soccer in the living room when the ball hit a glass of orange juice (his) and knocked it over. So, about now you might be thinking, “Why is Simon playing soccer in the living room?”, to which the answer is, “because I decided to give up on what was looking increasingly like a losing battle.” Simon plays soccer all the time. If he’s not eating or sleeping, he’s playing soccer. This includes times when he is watching a show and playing soccer, playing basketball while playing soccer, and playing tennis while playing soccer. Did you know you can kick a ball into a basket and/or over the net?  You totally can! It’s a compulsion with him. I’m pretty sure sometimes he doesn’t even know he’s kicking a ball. Ergo, I’ve surrendered.

Anyway, pop goes the ball. Crash comes the ball on the way down. And over goes the orange juice. I’m in the kitchen at the time, unsure as to what the most recent soccer ball casualty might be. I only learned when I watched Simon run to the bathroom off the kitchen, grab a hand towel, and then come back a few minutes later to hang the orange-bedripping towel back up. Now, the towel obviously wasn’t the best tool of choice, putting it back is out of the question, and my floor is going to be ticky-tacky sticky. But I loved that he took the initiative to clean up on his own without asking for help. So instead of reprimanding him, I showed him where to put the wet towel and waited to do the real clean-up later when he wasn’t around.

Now here comes the biggie. Saturday night we headed over to Caroline’s house for dinner. While the guys went to pick up our meal at Cafe Lou Lou, the kids played outside and Carrie and I chatted and enjoyed some wine indoors. At one point, Carrie and I realized that we hadn’t heard the usual squealing and laughing for a few minutes. So we went outside to investigate, whereupon we found . . . nothing.

“Simon?” I called out, confused. “Simon and Caroline, where are you two playing?” I yelled a bit louder, this time with a voice tinged with fear. And then I saw it. Or Carrie did–I’m not sure which: Simon and Caroline heading up the street towards the house, with Caroline’s Dad immediately behind them and Matt following closely in the car. The two of them had decided to walk to Cafe Lou Lou to meet the dads. Matt and Barry saw them as they drove back from the restaurant, roughly half a block from the house, heading towards Bardstown Rd. (a busy street) Now might be a good time to note that their street, like ours, has lots of parked cars on it and no sidewalks.

So, yikes! We all know the myriad ways their grand adventure could have ended in tragedy. We asked Caroline if she knew where she was going, to which she replied, “I had a map in my head.” Carrie nodded and said she probably did. We also both agreed that neither child would do this on his or her own; partnership emboldened them.

At another time and possibly with another child, I would have blown a gasket. But honestly, I just couldn’t. In the first place, losing my temper would have gotten Simon so riled up that I’m not sure he would have heard what I had to say about safety. And in the second place, even though he went about it all wrong, I had to be pleased to see my once timid child try to do something so independent. And thirdly, I’m pretty sure I decided at a similar age to leave my house, walk up to Breckenridge Lane (a busy street), and sit in the ditch that doubled as the shoulder to watch the cars go buy. Smart kids can still pull some awfully stupid stunts.

Instead of yelling, I sat him down and calmly and succinctly explained that while I love to see him want to do things on his  own, this is something he must never, ever do again. He could have gotten lost, gotten grabbed, or gotten flattened. Anytime he wants to leave a yard for any reason, he must go talk to a grown-up first.

He got the message, as did I. For the first three to four years of his life, I had to watch Simon like a hawk because he couldn’t do much for himself and didn’t understand danger. Now the hawk-watching era has returned, with the twist that it’s precisely because Simon can do a lot on his own, even as he still doesn’t fully understand the danger.

It’s been mentioned before that Simon’s favorite TV show is 500 Greatest Goals (or “500 Gratist Goles” according to his All About Me worksheet).  This week we have already watched Greatest Goals of the 2012-13 Champions League, and Greatest Goals of the 2012-13 Premier League Season is scheduled to record this afternoon.  Simon doesn’t just love goals, he has developed criteria for ranking them:

1. The goal is struck from distance.  Outside the penalty area is almost a must, near the half-way line is sublime.
2. The goal humiliates the goalkeeper.  Chipping over a keeper who’s come off his line or leaving him flat-footed while the ball goes in the opposite corner is acceptable.  Nutmegging the keeper or forcing an accidental own-goal is getting somewhere.  Causing the keeper to injure himself, while regrettable, is comedy gold.
3. The goal is the result of a feat of acrobatics.  These are the best, really.  Diving headers, sideways volleys, and, the crème de la crème, bicycle kicks.

Here is a goal from last Summer that checks all three boxes:

Bicycle kicks…part of a whole series of  ridiculous soccer moves that I see kids (including Simon’s cousin Ben) endlessly practicing, but never quite pulling off — kind of like skateboarders on Bardstown Road.  Simon has been practicing the bicycle kick for the last couple of months, and I always want to tell him to stop wasting his time and work on his fundamentals.  I don’t, mind you.  I let him have his fun.  And I have to admit that, for a fairly timid child, he can fling his body over backwards with a fearlessness I could never muster.  The first time I saw his overhead foot actually connect with a ball I just about plotzed.

Well, Simon made his first honest-to-God bicycle kick goal this past Monday. It wasn’t a real game — just a bunch of us horsing around at the field hockey goals in Seneca Park — but it was incredible! Simon and I were practicing crosses while his friend Menelik, tired from running around in the heat, was taking a turn in the goal.  I lobbed a high ball into the box, assuming Simon would head it, but instead Simon ran to position himself facing outward between the goal and the ball.  I could see the light go on in his eyes and I knew he was going to go for it!  The ball took a single high bounce, Simon went over backwards with his right foot extended, and WHAM! The ball went straight over Menelik’s shoulder and into the back of the net. I was stunned.

The only unfortunate thing about this? Simon didn’t really get to see the goal itself since he was in the process of landing on his back (and, I assume, trying not to break his neck). I suppose he’ll have to wait a bit until he has 10 slow motion cameras following his moves from every angle.  And while Simon loves to see the abstract goalies of TV land humiliated by a stunner, his sweeter nature takes over when the action is closer to home.  “I didn’t tell about my bicycle kick in Sharing Time today”, he told me when he got home from school on Tuesday.  “I was afraid Menelik would be embarrassed.”  Menelik doesn’t have anything to be embarrassed about, I explained to him, but Simon certainly has something to be proud of.

Earlier in the year, Simon was stuck in a troubled triangle friendship. He and the one boy remained close friends and the other two boys remained close to each other, but Simon and the third boy were proving not to be very simpatico. I have my theories as to how or why this happened, but the only part that matters is that Simon was caught up in a bad dynamic, and on many days he had unhappy stories from the gym or playground.

Then things took a turn. Simon started wanting to play basketball in the gym, and he found a few other boys who were interested in joining him. Not either boy from the triangle, but a new crew: Ayokunie, Menelik, Adarius, and sometimes Idris.  When the weather warmed up, a few of these same boys took to the soccer field. On days they didn’t, Simon continued his solo efforts on the monkey bars.

For weeks after the basketball club was convened, I heard nothing about the third boy from the triangle. Truly not one mention. Simon finally brought him up again on one of our runs, and then again on a car ride home. This time the report was that they ran races together recently, and that the boy was nicer to him than he had been before.

Piecing the timeline together is hard, but from what I can tell, things happened this way:

• Simon becomes friends with two boys.
• One of the boys starts being mean to Simon; Simon doesn’t know what to do.
• Simon begins to play basketball with a new group of boys.
• The new group takes their game outside to the playground, too.
• After a few months of self-deportation, the third boy gets nicer.

Now, I have no idea if the other boy changed his tune because he matured, because Simon’s absence robbed the boy of a target, or if Simon’s social stock rose when he began regularly playing a big boy game with some of the older kids in class. Frankly, I don’t care, either. All I know is that Simon’s love of ball gave him an escape route out of a difficult social situation and widened his social circle.

All hail the power of ball.

Out on a run with his mom

There’s this parenting maxim that nearly everyone hears at some point. It goes like this:

“You’re not their friend. You’re their parent.”

Or, inversely,

“My job isn’t to be your friend. You have lots of those. I’m your parent.”

Parent or not, I’m sure you’ve heard it. You may have even said it. I’ve probably said it myself, more than likely in judgment against someone whose parenting I found lacking.

But I’ve been thinking for a week or so now that I don’t actually believe this anymore. And I’m not talking about being friends with my own mom once I became an adult and fully independent. No, I’m saying I don’t believe it now.

I am Simon’s mom; I am also his friend. Or, more accurately, he’s my son and my friend. He’s not the kind of friend with whom I share my problems (not that I have many of those, really), nor the kind of friend who can take a sarcastic tone with me, nor a friend with equal powers or influence in our relationship. But he’s my friend nonetheless.

It’s a realization that had been coming for a while and developed fully this week when, on the eve of our wedding anniversary, Matt got very sick. (Strep, probably the result of a weakened immune system from his hernia surgery last month. It’s been a long spring for Matt.)

The sickness hit on Thursday afternoon, so I was charged with keeping Simon occupied and far, far way from his father. Thursday after school I took Simon straight to the running store, where he could be fitted for his own running shoes. He begged to go out with me on Mother’s Day, turning my 5-mile slow run into a 2-mile even slower one. He wasn’t tired in the least, and I promised him hills and greater distance on our next outing. Thursday evening, kitted out in his gray and orange New Balance 890s, we did 2 miles on park hills. He still wasn’t tired at all. All that soccer has conditioned him even better than I realized, and it’s looking like I have a new twice-a-week running companion.

Friday after school, on our actual wedding anniversary, Matt never budged from bed. So Simon and I headed out to our neighborhood coffee shop. I had a latte and vegan macaroons; Simon had a chocolate chip cookie; and we lingered around our favorite table talking about our week and playing banana-grams. It was a nice night, just not the one I had expected to have.

And Saturday? Saturday was the busiest yet. First, we went to Simon’s baseball game. Then we came home, ate a quick lunch, and headed out to his drum lesson, where I got to meet his new teacher and get an better idea of what goes on in there. After that was pilates.

Matt was still too ill to watch Simon, and I didn’t want to cancel my private lesson. Solution? I brought him along. He was excited to meet Ms. Holly, my teacher, and see what this pilates business looked like. He played soccer for a while, ate a snack while I worked out, and then asked if he could try something, too. Holly was fabulous about the whole thing and taught Simon how to do leg presses and some ab work on the reformer. I about died from laughter when Holly guided Simon to work his legs while “powering from your core” and staying “long through the pelvis.” Honestly, the addition of Simon made my workout about 10 minutes shorter than usual, but he loved it and I’ll certainly do it again. He’s already asking when he can go back.

After this, it was shopping time. Simon needed some running tees if he’s going to keep joining me. It’s getting hot, and cotton won’t do. I popped into a shop to look at tops myself, about which Simon had opinions.

“That one’s just mediocre mom.” [It was.]

“Oooh, I like that one.” [So did I; I bought it.]

“Hey mom, look at this: It looks like an Africa dress! If it were Ms. Agok’s birthday, we’d get it for her.” [Ms. Agok’s birthday was Wednesday, but I didn’t tell Simon that!]

Then we finally had dinner and some quiet time at home. During all of this, I learned much about Simon’s interior life. For example, I learned that he resolved the problem of the friend who wasn’t nice to him by deciding he didn’t want to be friends himself. “He likes to make fun of people,” Simon explained to me. “I’m done with him.” How awesome is that? I also learned that he’s kept the identity of his best friend, Caroline, a secret. “One day I was playing with Shaina when ____ started to tease me. ‘Simon has a girlfriend. Simon has a girlfriend.’ If I told him about Caroline, I’d never hear the end of it. Why would I do that to myself?”

Why indeed? I have no idea what we’ll end up discussing today. It’s Sunday, a day I promised him that we’d go 2.5 miles on the same park hills. But back to the point at hand. Given how much time we spend together, how much we enjoy each other’s company, and how he’s getting me interested in his hobbies and I’m dragging him into mine, what else could I call him other than a friend? And why would I want to squelch those feelings?

So is he introverted or extroverted? Introverted all the way. I should have known this when, at age 2, he’d come home from school and tell me that he “watched my friends play”. So there’s the I, like Matt. He’s also one who likes to deepen his knowledge in a given topic and who very much lives in his head–all hallmarks of the I type.

How does he perceive the world and gather information? Well, he’s a fact collector for sure. But he’s not and never has been hands-on. That’s why I backed off of the Montessori approach for him. Simon has an uncanny interest in the theoretical or possible. He likes to think about infinity and Googol-plexes and asks unanswerable “what if” questions. His response to “that’s not possible” is always “but if it did happen anyway?” And he’s always looking for connections; he tells me what countries clouds looks like and recently observed that “that barf [on the Big Four pedestrian bridge] is shaped like South America.” That would make him an N, like me and Matt.

What about decisions? Does Simon lead from the heart or the head.Well, he’s super emotional, super sensitive, and super tuned into to others. But he’s a rule follower and quite logical. And if it comes down to it, he’ll go with what facts, logic, and rules tell him ought to be the case, even if he later struggles with that choice. So he’s an on-the-fence T, like Matt.

That brings me to the last piece. Is Simon someone who likes things settled? Is he organized and possessed of follow-through, like a J? Or is he the type to have many starts and few finishes, happy to leave options open and have things be unsettled. Hahaahahahha. Like his mother, he is all J. He might ask me an unanswerable question about negative infinity or where he’ll live when he grows up, but the boy wants a solid answer. And he always wants to finish what he started, even if he’s bitten off more than he can chew.

So I put this all together: INTJ. And looked it up. And do you know what they call this personality type?

“The Scientist”

I’m not making that up! Another site termed it “The Mastermind” and illustrated it with a chess board. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a rare personality type that is found in people ranging from Newton to C.S. Lewis, to Paul Krugman. Given Simon’s natural love for math and science, his interest in chess, and the way he’s always looking to space a soccer field, I think I got it. And given its rarity, I think I get why so many don’t fully “get” him.

p.s. To extend the laugh, Matt’s type comes up as “The Engineer” and mine as “The Mentor”.

Here’s the scoop. The Lovely Caroline (TM) had her family birthday party the Sunday after Derby, and her parents were kind enough to invite Simon over, too. Caroline has lots of school friends at her school, as does Simon at his, and I suspect she’s got friends from her extra-curricular activities the same way Simon does. But as we approach the year mark of their departure from KIP, their friendship is stronger than ever.

Their interests are wildly divergent, but their hearts and temperaments are remarkably alike. Simon will draw mermaids with her, and Caroline will play basketball (with a dancing flourish) with him. So long as they are together, it’s all good. Their friendship bypassed cute a while ago; it’s truly a thing of beauty now.

Anyway, Caroline had “frog ring” on her birthday wish-list. I had no idea how to find a ring for a girl her age, but I figured frog jewelry shouldn’t be so hard. So on Oaks Day, for which school was cancelled, Simon and I went shopping. We failed to find a cute frog charm at a department store and jewelry store, but hit pay-dirt at Brighton, a jewelry and accessory shop.

While Simon and I deliberated over a plain silver frog and an enameled “C” charm with a butterfly on it, a clerk came over. I explained that I was looking for a girl-appealing frog charm, and she led me to a bright green princess frog complete with crown, pink gloves, and a bejeweled belly. It was perfect. But I wasn’t sure what length chain to get with it, and told Simon I needed to use him as my size model.

He turned puce.

“Relax, honey,” I assured him. “No one is going to look at you funny or laugh at you for shopping for a friend. Everyone here knows this isn’t for you, and I promise you that it’s super cool to shop for a girl like this.”

This got the original clerk’s attention.

“Oh, is this for your friend? Who is she?”

“Her name is Caroline, and she’s like my best friend probably. She loves swimming and tennis and math, and she almost loves soccer. [She doesn’t at all, but a boy can hope.] Oh! And she can draw really well and can even write cursive. She also really loves butterflies and fairies and stuff.”

As he spoke, he smiled broadly, which means the dimples came out. So there was my very cute 6-year-old son with a frog necklace around his neck waxing poetic about his best friend, the girl the necklace was for. At this point, I’m hearing things like “Look at those dimples!” and “Oh my gosh, does he have a girlfriend?” and “So cuuuute!” coming from two other clerks behind the store counter.

Then one disappeared briefly, returning with a plate of chocolate-chip cookies moments later.

“Here honey. Would you like a cookie for being such a good shopper?”

Would he? Of course he would! I grabbed one, too, and relished the fact that these three strangers clearly thought my son’s regard for his best friend was a thing of beauty, too.

“No. Stop. I don’t like it when you do that.”

His voice is not raised, and his tone remains polite.* And the other boy? Well, he does nothing of course! It’s like he doesn’t even hear Simon. Meanwhile, Simon grows increasingly perplexed because he doesn’t understand why he’s being pushed/sat on/yanked on in the first place and really doesn’t understand why his friends don’t listen when asked politely. He wouldn’t do any of these things. He’d listen to his friends. Of course, he’d rather play a real game like soccer or basketball than some chaotic chasing game in the first place, which is part of the problem.**

It doesn’t pay to be old for you age at recess.

Sowder suggested we act out some scenarios to help Simon, read some good books on the topic, and possibly even put Simon in a more contact-oriented sport or the martial arts. I don’t have much interest in the third, but the first two ideas are solid. So we talked about how to assert oneself without breaking the rules, and we acted out some common scenarios. Simon understood us a little. And then something wonderfully terrible happened.

It was at our last soccer game. One of the boys on our team, I’ll just call him C, has Asperger’s and was a coaching challenge throughout the season. C would push and/or trip kids at every game or practice.*** His parents deferred to the coaches’ authority, but honestly, we were all just parent volunteers, and dealing with C was way above our pay grade. Plus, it’s hard enough to corral eight other six- and seven-year-olds for a practice drill (one other kid had attention and maturity issues); it’s impossible to do that while providing constant vigilance for another.

As a result, I regret to report that many of the kids got pushed or elbowed at least once per game or practice. We did our best, but it often wasn’t good enough; I feel bad for the other players. Anyway, fast forward to our last game of the season. C’s last practice had been disastrous (I had to pull him out), so I was watching extra closely in the game. And sure enough, minutes if not seconds after being put in the game, he threw an elbow and hit Simon’s friend Declan right in the stomach.

I signaled the ref and went to pull C from the game. And Declan—poor, polite Declan who loves soccer and had taken one too many elbows or shoves all season—blew his stack:

“Stop hitting me!” he screamed. “Just stop! Why are you always hitting and shoving people? What’s wrong with you? Stop it!”

Declan’s face was red, and his voice was loud and assertive. He meant business. But he did not hit, shove, or elbow back. He blew his stack while following all the good-boy ground rules. I wanted to hug him, and not just because he was hurt after being elbowed.

In the end, Declan resumed play. C watched from the sidelines with his parents. And Simon and I had a great talk about what happened in the car. “Be like Declan,” I advised. “He had it exactly right.”

I am thrilled to report that when Simon’s best friend got too physical with him one day last week, Simon started with his usual line. When that didn’t work, he trotted out a loud and angry sounding “No! Stop it! Why are you pushing me?” And you know what? It worked!

Standing up to a friend is totally different from standing up to a stranger. But it’s a start, and I’m thrilled that Simon at last made some progress. I’m also really, really grateful to Declan for showing him the way. And I feel more than  little dirty that I benefited from a sweet seven-year-old’s distress.

*His tone was polite because he is almost always polite. In fact, Simon has the best behavior in his class. I know this because he finished his class star chart (for good behavior) more than a week earlier than the next best behaved kids in class, both of whom are (not surprisingly) girls. The words “polite” and “well mannered” feature prominently on every single report card. Now that his politeness has become a handicap, I feel like I can state it plainly without being an obnoxious braggart.

**At the school spring festival last Friday, Simon spent the entire time playing soccer (what else?) with older boys. Much older—most of them looked to be in 4th or 5th grade. No issues arose from this. In fact, at one point Matt overhead a kid taunt his friend with this zinger: “Man, you just got schooled by a kindergartener!” He’s also finding gym days less traumatic now that he has found the two or three other kindergarten boys interested in playing basketball with him.

***Poor C also had difficulty following the game now that he plays in the older division. With its spacing, need for coordination, and focus on non-verbal communication and cooperation with peers, I’m not convinced that soccer is a great fit for the child with Asperger’s. It certainly isn’t a good fit for this particular child. I’m working on a way to communicate this to the league steering committee without sounding unkind or impatient.

“I am a reading machine!”

Screamed it even. And he was right. Simon is recognizing ever more words, is doing better at sounding out new words, and is just excited as can be about the whole thing. So excited that he feels compelled to call out every street name and road sign, the name of every catalog in the house, the names of businesses we pass, and the text on product packaging. Our entire life is being narrated for us.

“Bike Lane . . . No parking at any time . . . No stopping at any time . . . No turn on red . . . Cherokee . . . Deer Park . . . Mark’s . . . Taco Bell . . . Hefty trash bags . . . Title Nine . . . Land’s End . . . Designing Power Supplies for Tube Amplifiers . . .”

And on it goes. TV news tickers, book titles, and handwritten notes are all game. Having at last unlocked the code to reading, he feels compelled to do so at every turn. Last night, he started playing with his globe and realized that he could now name almost every country—even those he has yet to memorize by shape. He was fairly shrieking with joy.

Like birth, first steps, and first words, it’s one of those things that happens to almost everyone on the planet, yet still feels amazing and new when it happens to your kid. The cutest thing he’s said yet?

“Today at school, I read a book to myself. It was like I could hear the words in my brain, but none of my friends could hear me.”

I can’t wait to see where we go next. And seeing this magic unfold, I’m extremely grateful to the kindergarten teaching staff at Brandeis for making it happen, especially his teacher Mr. Sowder, and his W.I.N. (What I Need) teachers Ms. Rhoda, Ms. Darlene, and Ms. Schecter.

One night last week, Simon awoke crying in the wee hours of the night. Matt went to him, and between sobs and then again the next morning, Simon described his “scary dream” to us:

“I was trying to walk to my haircut [on Bardstown Rd.]. And I took Spring to Speed, but Speed wouldn’t go to Bardstown Road, and I couldn’t get there.”

I’m not at all surprised that Simon would have an anxiety dream, but I would have expected at this age for anxiety to manifest in his sleeping brain as monsters or mummies coming after him. This particular iteration just seems so grown-up for a still-small child.

I’m also amused that Simon has anxiety over getting lost of all things. He’s told me before that he’s scared about driving ten years hence because he’s afraid of not knowing where to go and of getting lost. The punchline here being that the kid has a terrific sense of direction and can easily tell you which highways lead to a given destination. Really, this should be my anxiety dream, not his.

On to “Old Soul: Exhibit B”: Simon may have just suffered his first existential crisis. While I attended a screening of “Trigger: The Ripple Effect of Gun Violence” by the Presbyterian church of America last night as part of a community-wide panel discussion on gun violence, Matt took Simon for a stroll across the Big Four Bridge. At one point, Matt looked up to see Simon with his hands in his pockets looking very pensive.

As a fellow introvert who also enjoys getting lost in his thoughts, Matt let this go for a while. When they got to the bottom of the ramp, he asked Simon about what was going through his mind. The answer was this:

“Oh, I was picturing my body down there in the water.  Just floating down the river. And I was dead.”

Needless to say, that’s not what Matt was expecting to hear. On our first trip across the bridge, last Tuesday, Simon was initially frightened, then subsequently delighted, to walk across the Ohio River. But even when fear turned to happiness, he still paused at regular intervals to see how far the river was from us and speculate as to weather he could swim to the river bank if he fell in any given point.

Matt tells me that he took a two-pronged approach to responding to Simon. First, he assured him that he was not going to fall in and that even if he did, Matt would jump in right after him. Second, he assured him that everyone has those fleeting morbid thoughts and that as he gets older they will be easier to control.

I’m almost afraid to hear what’s going through his mind next. Then again, at least at six he’ll tell me!