I first realized my ten year old was smarter than me during one of his lengthy tech demonstrations, the kind where he insists we sit still and watch, when he casually dropped both anomaly and emulating into the same sentence.
He plays with robots for fun. Downloads operating systems, old and new, just to see how they work. He knows how to repair electronics, reprogram things I didn’t know were programmable, and can explain processes I can’t even pronounce.
He’s also a human GPS. Rattles off intersections and street names like he’s memorized the map of our entire county.
He is serious. Literal. Easily offended. When he’s excited, he launches into rapid explanations, pacing and gesturing, diving headfirst into whatever breakthrough he’s just made or device he’s figured out how to bend to his will. His mind is a marvel. Sharp. Unrelenting. Precise.
He is filled with focus, with questions, with worries that arrive suddenly and without warning, the kind we don’t always see coming.
And somewhere between the laptops stacked on the desk, the tangle of hard drives and flash drives scattered across the room, and the HDMI cables that seem to multiply overnight, I realized something quietly staggering:
I’m not just raising a child. I’m witnessing the becoming of someone extraordinary — an anomaly in the best sense. His brain is wired differently and that’s not a problem to solve. It’s the very thing that makes him remarkable.
This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.
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