Cars vs. Basketball

Bailey is 12, in fact he just turned twelve. As far as being 12 goes he is pretty normal, but he is developing some pretty interesting talents. Two of those emerged the other night as I was taking he and his friend Paul to basketball practice.

Normally it only takes about five to ten minutes to take them to where practice was, but because it had been snowing, for two days straight, it took us a bit longer. This is a good thing because I had the wonderful chance to hear this exchange between the two of them.

"Toyota, Camry, v6; Chevy, Silverado 3/4 ton; Mazda 6," Bailey rattles off, and the list just went on and on as we drove past all of the cars. He would call out the make and model of every car, truck and SUV, and he was right about everyone of them.



Paul says, "How do you do that? How do you know what all the names of those cars are?"

Bailey said, "I don't know, I just know them." At this point Paul decides he is going to join in the car naming fun.

"That one is grey, and that one has 4 doors!" he states. "That's about as good as I will ever be naming cars." Both boys laughed.

At this moment I pulled up at a stop light and to the right of us was a beautiful old building. Bailey pops off with a random statement, "That building is erroneous!"

Paul and I both start laughing and Paul asks Bailey how he knows such big words? And I was laughing because I know what erroneous means, and it is not a word to describe an old beautiful building.

Erroneous: based on or containing an error, to be mistaken, wrong, incorrect or inaccurate; to stray from what is considered moral, decent, proper, etc.

So I said, "Bay, do you know what erroneous means?"

"No, but when you combine enormous and radical you get erroneous!" I laughed even harder. He truly had a point.

The light turned green and we started moving. In order to help Paul feel more comfortable with Bailey's fascinating talents I said, "Paul, you know, you have a talent like Bay. You can name every college and NBA player and their team, just like Bay can name cars."




As if on cue Bailey plays "Name that basketball player" like Paul played "Name that car". Bailey says,"Yea, if you asked me to talk about basketball all I could say is hey, that guys black and that one's bald, and oh, there's another black guy."

We all laughed some more. So today, actually on Tuesday, I am grateful for the growing minds of twelve year old boys. Huzzah!