electric boogaloo

Nicolaus has decided that he is cool with the fact that there are other kids his own age who exist on this planet. Now when we go to a playground, instead of hanging out by himself on the outer perimeter he walks right up to anyone his size or smaller. And he starts talking to them.

I knew this guy in college named Roger. Roger was a pretty nice guy, but more than once I almost stabbed Roger in the eye with my pen just to make him stop talking about technical details of things that I didn’t need to know.

I accidentally asked him a question one time, and he said “Oh, well see that’s actually very interesting…”
And so began the most tedious 45 minutes of my entire life, even including all those meetings I had to go to when I worked at SBC that were all about some newfangled internet “ADSL” crap. Yawn, right? At least at SBC they gave us little notepads we could use to take notes and silently ask our team mates helpful questions like “Are we going to develop boilerplate for this technology?” and “Dude, the guy giving the presentation SO WANTS YOU” and “I think Neil just farted.”

But Roger didn’t give me a little notepad. All I could do was stand there and wait for him to finish.

I’m not saying that Nicolaus is tedious to talk to. He’s not like Roger. No no nonoooo, I’m not comparing him to that guy at all. Except in the sense that to other children, he is exactly like Roger. Most of the time he just starts lecturing them on a random topic and the poor kids have no idea what the motherfucking fuck he’s talking about, with the stalactites and stalagmites and dinosaurs evolving into birds and carnivorous dinosaurs became? Hawks! And owls and other carnivorous birds. And parasaurolophuses became those kinds of birds that have stuff on their heads.

You zoned out reading that just now, didn’t you? Admit it. It’s cute and cool because a little kid is saying it, and *I* love listening to his wonderful lessons but I’m A) his mother and B) a huge nerd with few friends. But really and truly let’s admit that there is a reason that Ross Geller has a hard time with the ladies. Except in that one season where Tyra Banks was a paleontologist, but I had pretty much stopped paying attention by that point.

What?

Oh. My kid talks a lot.

So I didn’t know what to tell him when he came home from school bummed out because the other kids ignore him. “I try and TRY to talk to them and tell them about insterding things, and you know what they do? They just walk away! And don’t say anything.”

My heart broke for him a little, because he’s trying. Damn you, other kids – would it kill you to nod your head and pretend that you see the invisible chihuahuas and/or care deeply about volcanoes?

I didn’t know what to tell him. Kevin, any ideas?

Kevin sighed, “Well, Nicolaus I’ll tell you something about other kids…”

I waited for the words of wisdom. The strategy, the key he needed to make friends in life.

“It doesn’t get any better. Other kids are just weird. And when you’re a grown up, you’ll find that other grown ups are weird too. A lot of times, what they do just doesn’t make any sense. It’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

Okay, so it’s not a strategy, but I think it helped. Hey it’s nothing personal, people are freaks.

****
I started writing this entry on Wednesday, but was blinded by a headache so I didn’t have a chance to post it. Thursday I mentioned to his teacher that he’s been upset that the other kids ignore him when he tries to talk to them.
“Oh!” She looked to make sure he wasn’t in earshot, “That’s because they don’t realize that he’s talking to them. Nicolaus talks all the time. He walks around narrating everything that he’s thinking or doing, so when he starts talking to them…” she shrugged her hands and smiled.

I don’t want him to stop his constant outer dialog. He’s been doing it since he was a baby, and I can’t imagine what he’d do if words were stuck inside his head. So for now we’re sticking to they’re just weird, Nicolaus. I don’t know why. They just are.