Overheard

Words overheard in the Delaunay household tonight:

Hominid
Theropedic
Sauropods
Coelophysis

These were not part of a conversation between the over-educated parental units who reside here. Nuh-uh, dude. In fact, Lars and I would only have known the meaning of one of those words if the tween who lives here hadn't enlightened us.

It maddens me that the jury is out on our boy's future. He is so damn smart he takes my breath away. But he can barely dress himself. He can't manage to do anything that has expectations attached to it. He is addicted --addicted! -- to his computer. I loved listening to him play his violin as much as I love hearing him talk about bird-hipped and lizard-hipped dinosaurs. But I will probably never hear him play again, because my admiration, and his teacher's, made him crumple.

Benjy's either going to live a gorgeous, astonishing life -- write a brilliant book on paleontology, discover a new dinosaur fossil, win a Nobel Prize -- or he's going to be with us until we die, collecting disability payments, gaming, collecting more and more knowledge about the world which he will never put to use.

It's possible he'll do something in-between. Get a job in the fish department at Petco. Breed fennec foxes in the backyard. Maybe he'll even be a husband and a dad -- which is far from in-between. I bet he'll be a great husband and dad. Just not a well-dressed one.

What I know for sure is that, whatever he does, he will always dazzle me.