Nigel has maintained for quite some time now that he wants to be an inventor when he grows up. Yet he has this fascination for history and a photographic memory when it comes to names, dates, and events that makes me think this passion needs to be encouraged. 

Today after homeschool we went to the library, where Nigel picked up some videos on horses, the human body, Secrets of the Mummy, and Thomas Edison. Then we went to our local grocery store where I picked up a few items while he went to the video section to try to find Disney’s Donald in Mathemagic Land. They didn’t have it, but they did have the old live-action Treasure Island, so he got that instead, saying, “I haven’t seen this in a while.”

We got home and got ourselves some lunch (he did his usual grazing approach: two pieces of bread, a pear, an apple, a cup of yogurt, and I put some tortilla chips in a pan and melted some cheese on top). Nigel took his lunch to eat in the living room while he started Treasure Island, and I sat at the kitchen counter reading WordPress for Dummies while I ate.

After about ten minutes, out of nowhere, Nigel called out from the living room, “Mom, you were born in a period of economic inflation.”

Me: Yes, I suppose I was.

That was all.  He often leaves me hanging like that. I suppose I could have asked him why he mentioned that at that moment, but I was too caught up in marveling at his sentence structure and didn’t want to stop his train of thought, wherever it was going. Sometimes I wonder if all of his musings might come out on paper some day, along with his analysis and theories about humanity. He strikes this amazing balance between attachment (to those he loves) and detachment (from social mores and historical events) that I really think he might possess an innate ability to look objectively at a situation (historical or otherwise) and see what’s really going on. I know, I’m making some assumptions here, maybe asserting my own biased observation, projecting that my son could be some amazing social analyst because of his autism.

But I was born in 1971, and I can’t remember when I had last mentioned that around him. He filed it away, along with whatever he had previously read about inflation, and somehow the two topics combined in his head while he was watching Treasure Island. His mind fascinates me.