A friend and her two kids stayed here for the 4th. The 12 year old boy and 15 year old girl are both taller than me already, so they're well on their way to gronkhood. Either that or I'm shrinking. Their parents are nuts. Mom is a needy, dim mess. Dad, now gone, is seriously sociopathic. I identify with these children.
The girl is somehow brilliant. I noticed it when she was 9 and we would play logic puzzles. That she could deduct at that age was notable, but I was even more impressed that when I outsmarted her, it drove her positively insane and she wanted to deconstruct how I'd done it. "You're nine," I would say. "If I couldn't outsmart you, I would kill myself." That only made her angrier. I respected her anger. Kid's got a mental motor. Today, she's an all-everything honors student. She brought homework to my house for the fourth of July. Yes, homework. She's in summer school, loading up on AP courses, because, in her words, "I've only got one shot at getting into college and getting out of here."
What do you say? She's right. She's already on her own in this world, and she knows it.
Now that I've told you how smart she is...
She came downstairs Sunday morning marveling over what she'd just seen in the guest room: my Windows 98 book. "Mine" as in I wrote it, all by myself, without any help from Dorkass, who balanced her checkbook in her office while I did her job.
"I just saw that Windows 98 book," the kid said, wide-eyed. "It's unbelievable to me that Microsoft plans that far in advance!"
Confused, I blinked at her. Then I realized that to her, Windows 8 is the latest version, so this book is written about something 90 versions from now. I laughed and said "If you think that's impressive, you should see my Windows 2000 book."
And I saw that anger again. Just like when she was 9, she steamed over not being the smartest person in the room. This is going to take this kid far in life. I did my best Emperor imitation.
"Your hate has made you powerful."