What can you do but faint?

I held out the centrifuge to Rio. Now this is not a toy, I told him, it is a real piece of lab equipment. Now you are probably asking yourself what kind of idiot buys a six-year-old a working centrifuge?

The answer to that it is: an idiot who is the father of a most unusual and exceptional child. I confess, my son flunked kindergarten. Rio, who has a college-graduate level vocabulary couldn’t be bothered to learn how to read. This year his teacher says he’s doing great on reading at school, but he won’t pick up a book at home.

We’ve got how many thousands of books in our personal library and a kid who doesn’t want to read????? Arggggggggggggg!!!!!!

Well, he is what God made him. His teacher also tells me he is a mathematical genius, or wizard, or some such. My personal observations throughout life are that humans are good at words or numbers, but rarely both. Rio is also a born engineer. He can take anything apart in record time and more remarkably can actually put it back together right 80% of the time. (We just aren’t going to talk about the other 20% of the time……)

But back to the centrifuge. I got him a DNA Explorer Kit, as his second great interest after how things work, is in all things biological. I think it is the result of trying to understand why all the adults in his life are so sick. Anyway, he can name all the organs of the human body on sight, and has a frighteningly broad understanding both body systems and of medicine. It was time to take it to the next level—the blue print of life—DNA.

Rio turned the centrifuge over carefully in his small hands, carefully studying it from every angle. “So….this…isn’t a toy?” he asked. “This is….real?”

Yep.

Rio set the machine down on the coffee table. “Excuse me, Daddy, I need to go to the library and faint.”

In hindsight, this seems like a good solution to overwhelming emotion. Just remove yourself for a moment and go faint. I just got an email that the advance copies of my book are being two-day FedEx’d to me.

Now I know every word, of course, I wrote them. Even the misspelled one. And I know what every page looks like. And I know what the cover looks like. But only on the computer, or on the printed page. I’m yet to see it as a book, with form and volume, and the wonderful smell of off-set ink on paper. I haven’t been able to hold it in my hands and thumb through its pages.

It has been a long time in coming, and I’m not real good a waiting. Visualization is about to be replaced with experience. I’m so excited and stressed out that I can’t stand it.

Excuse me, I think I’ll go into the library and faint.