A long time ago, I realized the futility of comparing my child to other children. During the “dark period” of diagnostic uncertainty, I did a lot of that. It is not beneficial or helpful in any way. But despite that, sometimes we find ourselves in situations where the comparison is right in your face, and you can’t avoid it.
That happened today, at the natural history museum. It was a really pleasant day, and I was thinking about how smooth it was going, compared to outings of the past. And then, we encountered the boy. I named him Eggbert.
Here’s a picture of Eggbert:
Ok, it's not really Eggbert, but I swear he looked just like this.
We were at the exhibit with all the dinosaur skeletons. Eggbert couldn’t have been older than 6. His dad, Mr. Eggbert, was wearing a shirt that said “Dinosaur Pete.” He didn’t work at the museum, so apparently he was just really into dinosaurs.
And then Eggbert spoke. “That dinosaur has a long neck, but the one with the longest neck is the mamenchisaurus, which is from China.”
Seriously??!
And then my little angel is in front of me, saying “Mommy, can we ride the elevator now?”
“And that one is a chasmosaurus…”
“MOMMY!! I REALLY want to ride the elevator! Can we ride the elevator NOW!”
“The pleurocoelus is from the early cretaceous.” Show off.
“MOMMY, THE ELEVATOR!” Yes, okay, that is, after all, why we trekked to the natural history museum…to ride the elevator.
Yes, Eggbert was one of those freakishly smart, super-genious kids. I’m happy for him, seriously. But riddle me this, Eggbert. While the little super-genious might be brilliant enough to engineer an actual Jurassic Park, what’s he going to do when the velociraptors have his ass surrounded? Pee his pants, that’s what. That’s when my little Tasmanian devil child will come in handy, because he will open up a can of whoop ass on those fuckers.
So even when comparison is unavoidable, I can still see all the positive attributes of my little cave-boy.
