"Mom wants me to put the fork in the dish washer. But those forks were already rinsed. Are they clean enough to put away instead? We're in a drought. It's the worst one in a hundred years. I guess it won't use more water to wash the fork with the other dishes. But maybe we should be using disposable forks so we don't have to wash them at all. Of course, then there is the landfill problem. I guess plastic is never a good answer. Even the compostable stuff sticks around for a long time. On the radio, the environmental guy said that "compostable" was mostly just for marketing, and we shouldn't use disposables ever. [NOTE: potential tangent on misleading marketing strategies DS has heard about] But then we have to use water to wash stuff. And we don't have enough water. And THAT problem is definitely getting worse. Clearly we need to figure out better desalination. But then we have to be careful about mucking with the ocean's salinity. We don't want a huge Dead Sea where the Pacific Ocean used to be. [NOTE possible thought tangent on what caused the Dead Sea to die] But maybe we could cycle the water back into the ocean. I think I have a book about the water cycle under my bed. [walking away to get book]. 'Mom - why are you yelling at me? Oh - the fork. Sorry.'"
I most definitely have one of those in my house -- if not two!
There can absolutely be a "disability" with physical things side by side with high intelligence. My son could read anything when he was two. He didn't learn to tie his shoes until he was seven or eight, and he didn't learn to ride a bike until he was almost eleven. I found out from this board that he probably has what's called "dyspraxia" or "apraxia", which I called "a lack of kinesthesia" -- his brain has a tenuous connection with his body. You can show him how to do something, where to place his fingers, how to put his hands just right, and when he tries it, even though his brain is thinking the right things, his hands do something else entirely. Even trying to place his fingers in the right positions meets with resistance from his muscles that are trying to do something different.
But you find yourself muttering, "the kid can do algebra, so why can't he manage to tie his shoes?" And the other thing, so aptly explained by suevv, leaves you muttering, "how can the kid skip two grades and still need help rinsing a fork?"
You're not crazy. It's just how it is.
