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My Heart Is Overflowing
I just had a fascinating intellectual conversation with a 10-year-old and his father
The 10-year-old is my grandson, and his father is my son.
As an educator and a woman who loves intellectual conversation, to have such a wonderful conversation with offspring of mine is the fulfillment of a lifetime.
Let me explain from the beginning (no, not of time. That would take too long.) It started with a birthday phone call on Wednesday to my daughter-in-law.
She told me the story of what happened before last Christmas that I hadn’t heard yet. It seems my grandson, who is in 4th grade, and a friend were talking, and the friend asked why they hadn’t been taught how many seconds there are in a day when they’d been taught how many seconds there are in a minute and how many minutes in an hour.
My daughter-in-law saw the look on her son’s face and knew he was concentrating. Sure enough, within a minute or so, her son said, “86,400.” My son, never a math whiz, also concentrated for a minute and said, “You’re right.” They then discussed how they had arrived at their conclusion and compared the differences. My daughter-in-law was amazed.
I was more than amazed. I was amazed at my son’s ability, but I was positively gobsmacked at my grandson’s. (There is no other word that fits how I felt.)…
