Evenings with an Exceptional 11-Year-Old

I love my grandchildren, but I never know how to talk to the young ones for any length of time, unless I have some place or activity to either allow for unspoken company or spark discussion. I was in his town for my 55^th High School Reunion last August, so I took 11-year-old Jason to the Zoo and the Art Center and that was cool, as we discussed the habits of animals and the creations of artists.

I promised to come see him again on a Monday night, but I was becoming anxious on the way over to his house that evening, as I began to wonder what we would do. Not having lived in his town for 40 years, I was not aware of anything else we could go “see” that would provide an interesting background to fall back on for conversation, and bike riding doesn’t provide that much opportunity for the interaction he deserves.

I was beginning to wish I hadn’t made the commitment, something that often happens to me with social engagements, natural loner that I am, even though those engagements usually work out fine once I’m there, as I’m also a natural people-person. And a rolling paradox in general.

Of course, this turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding evenings of my time in town. Jason and I have always gotten on well, but when he came to visit us, I’d be working a full- and a part-time job and we’d just have time for the Cultural Heritage Center, the Library, the Discovery Center and a few bike rides. 

When I was preparing for the evening I mixed up my usual evening-cocktail of concentrated cherry-juice syrup and bottled water, after dumping a little water out. This night, mixing one up for him too, I lost focus when I was shifting between bottles and lost count of the syrup amounts in each. I decided to use the mistake as an opportunity to discuss problem solving.

When I got there, I told him “one of them has too much syrup and one has too little and I don’t know which is which. How am I going to straighten this out?” I had barely gotten the words out of my mouth when he said, “Mix ‘em together.” I guess he doesn’t need a discussion on averages. 

Searching around for a topic of conversation, I thought of the fact that he had been playing first the viola and now a cello in school. I asked him to show me how a cello was played, with a bow and all. He had recently been given the cello his sister played in school and brought it out. From not having been played lately, the tension on the strings had relaxed a bit and the bridge, which is held in place only by that tension, had flopped over.

We started to prop the bridge up and tighten the strings again, but the key kept turning itself back as soon as we released it. I was soon baffled as I have a mechanical IQ in single digits. He noticed that the pegs were faded for a short distance, from exposure to light, indicating they needed to be pushed in further, but I didn’t think of pushing in on them at the same time I twisted the peg to tighten the string.

We later found out he had some strings that needed replaced anyway, and that gave us another chance to interact the next day, at the music store talking with their string tech.  

The cello project was laid aside, but I had an acoustic guitar with me, so I got that out and strummed a few chords, about all I ever mastered in my using days, even though I took it everywhere and hacked around on it a lot. Once I entered recovery and my life got busy, I let it sit idle as I hit college and then began my multi-job, make-up-for-lost-time life.  

I handed the guitar to him, but rather than making noise by randomly flailing around, strumming the strings, he picked one string at a time and listened to it fade out, then continued to try other effects, like sliding a left-hand finger on a string as he plucked it.

At a book sale in 1972 I had picked up Music: A Science and an Art (Redfield, J). It looked fascinating as I leafed through it, fastening on the frequencies of the notes, setting it aside to contemplate the obvious mathematical relationships of numbers like 440 and 392, as opposed to, say, 417 and 389, but never getting back to starting on page one and reading it.

Retired and in recovery, I had finally read the book, marveled at these and other relationships and instantly reread it. This night, as he played around with the sounds he could make, I began to talk about the frequencies of those vibrating strings, in turn vibrating molecules of air that set their neighbors in motion and the wave lengths of those vibrations. He asked, “What about outer space. There isn’t any air to move.”

It was turning out that we had plenty to talk about.

I had a thought that a musician friend might have some ideas about the cello, even though he didn’t play one. The next night, I took him over to his house, where the notion of combining the turning and the inward pressure as we tightened the peg solved that issue. After that, Jason was given a guitar and a glass slide to use and he played along with a tape of the man playing piano, picking out notes to accompany the piano. “You are the guitar piece in this,” he was told. My friend was amazed at how appropriately he added his notes to the mix. Not randomly plucking away, but picking a note that fit and waiting for the beat to add another.

Given his interest and native ability, I decided to leave the guitar with him when I left town and told him so. I also pointed out, “Notice I said, ‘I am leaving this guitar with you.’ I didn’t say I was giving it to you. What would it take for me to give it to you?” Again, quick on the uptake, he replied, “If I was playing it?”

That reminded me of when he was quite young, preschool, and I was reading Flanimals (Gervais, R) to him. The preface includes the phrase “…if I were you.” I explained to him what that phrase meant, asked if he understood and then asked if he could give me an example of it in a sentence. He quickly said, “If I were you, I’d read me all these books!”

Like his Gramma Linda, Jason has a great sense of humor. Chastised for making a small mess, he quickly looked at a pet and said, “Bad dog!” He does not like to get up in the morning and his dad has to call him repeatedly. One morning, he never did respond, so his dad went in his room to call him. When he still didn’t respond, his dad pulled back the blanket to reveal pillows arranged in the classic “escaped prisoner” mode and went downstairs to find Jason laughing.

But, all that aside, what I really, really find exceptional about Jason isn’t his quick mind, musical aptitude or his sense of humor. What I like the most about him is how much he cares about other people.

After learning his aunt was in a car accident, Jason called right away to ask how she was doing. On a previous visit to our town, the three of us were coasting our bikes down a steep grade in the near dark and his aunt was getting uneasy. He quickly volunteered to get off his bike to walk with her. Not the typical reaction of a sharp-eyed 11-year-old who felt like there was plenty of light and would rather have been seeing how fast he could take the hair-pin switchback curves. Unlike most kids his age, he doesn’t regard his six-year-old half-brother as a nuisance, but spends time with him when he visits.

All in all, Jason exemplifies the important half of the meme I first heard in Rehab: “I don’t care how much you know. I want to know how much you care.”

Happy Twelfth Birthday, Jason!