"2"

There's cute little kid whose mom works in our "muu baan" (village) as one of the gardeners. Almost every afternoon at about 4pm, we bump into him when he gets back from nursery school. He is clearly fascinated by my three children and follows us around like a puppy. So I've been chatting to him. His name is "Um".

I asked him how old he is, and he told me "2". I was fairly impressed as he was doing "homework" - they do start that really early here in Thailand - and was actually managing to write almost recognisable letters. The Thai script is fairly complicated so this is no mean feat for a 2-year old. Was I meeting a genius here????

Then a couple of days later Um came to our house - riding his bicycle. Now most kids I know master the art of riding a bicycle at about 4 years of age. Here was little Um at age 2 doing it, with a lot of confidence, so he'd obviously been doing it for some time. Now I was more than impressed, I was amazed. This kid is something else!

Later that evening I got to thinking: Writing Thai letters, riding a bike. Mmmm... I was not so sure. But then again, he is smaller than Emily who is almost 3, so it figures that maybe he IS 2.

The next time I saw him I asked him again - how old are you. "2" he answered. Now after 4 years in Thailand my Thai still fails me from time to time, so, thinking that maybe he did not understand my question I asked him which "anubaan" level he is in. In the Thai kindergartens there are a couple of levels, usually 2 or 3, and give a good indication of a kid's age. Usually.

"2" he answered. Ah ha, I was onto something here.

"How many brothers and sisters do you have?" I asked. Yes, you guessed it: "2"

But, that's not all - apparently he has 2 older brothers and 2 older sisters. 2 younger brothers and 2 younger sisters too. If I had asked, I bet he would have told me that he had 2 mothers and 2 fathers.

Yesterday I chatted to his mom. "How old is Um?" I asked casually.

"Five."

So my little genius turned out to be a normal kid after all. Or maybe not even all that normal, but let's not go there!

Reminds me of a little girl in Jonty's class who told me that she has 9 sisters, aged 17, 15, 8, 7, 6, and 5, and a baby brother. When I asked her how old the others were she asked - "what others???"