My 14 year old son has to read the latest news before he can get out of bed--even on vacation. He always has interesting things to talk about. We stay with his sister in Dallas for a week every year and she says she always gets an education when we visit.
He sees humor or irony and visual puns everywhere and is quick to point them out. He is such a good comedian that when we are arguing about something and he is really mad at us he uses humor to diffuse the situation and we all end up laughing so hard that tears come to our eyes.
He gets anxiety when he takes tests and we were told when he was nine that it looked like he had a problem with visual memory but this was at the same time he was able to learn the spelling of thousands of words while practicing for a spelling bee. He could remember them, even the hardest words, without ever seeing them again. If he was going to make a mistake it would be on an easy word, but that was rare too. He could spell as well as read when he was two. Now he is learning to read Japanese and seems to be learning that quickly. He remembers logos and he always does well on tests of visual memory on the computer--but then he doesn't do the online tests when he has a migraine. This is one reason I don't always believe test results. I have to look at test results in combination with everything else I see.
He is very picky about what he will watch on television. He can't sit through most movies without his mind wandering but he enjoyed watching The Artist and he can watch anime for hours. He reads on his iPhone while watching television. He loves video games but he gets bored with those too and would never spend hours and hours just playing video games. He has to take breaks to find out if anything new is going on in the news and to talk to us about whatever is happening. He has always loved to talk--mostly to adults because he didn't fit in with kids his age or his friends who were usually three or four years older. Now that he is 14 and his friends have jobs and cars and girlfriends, etc. he doesn't get to talk to them so he socializes online. Most of his online friends are college age and assume he is too.
He can't see why anyone would choose to live in a small town. He can't see the beauty in wide open spaces and lots of cows and horses and wheat fields. To him, beauty is cities with tall buildings and lots of lights and restaurants and lots of people doing interesting things, talking about interesting things instead of gossiping and judging others and then shunning people that don't think exactly the way they think. My daughter was the same way.
Is not being able to tolerate mediocrity a quirk? My kids don't get people who tell them "make do with what you've got." My daughter is telling her brother that he should never settle for less and to keep working for what he wants even if it means working more than one job for a while when he is older. She left home as soon as she could and worked so that she could drive a better car and wear nicer clothes than I do.
