One day, Xavier (with much difficulty and a some help from his nanny) pushed open the glass door of the library where I worked, and stepped in. He headed straight for the 'transportation' section. It turned out that Xavier was obssessed with fire trucks. His favorite book was "Sam the Trucker" and he had memorized the book by heart.
I didn't know anything about Xavier then, and I made the mistake of trying to introduce him to books that were made for kids who weren't yet in school. Books made out of card board and had large pictures. He clearly wasn't interested. He sat down and carefully chose a DK book (a publishing company that specializes in illustrated reference books). Xavier's eyes soaked in every detail as he slowly flipped through the pages.
A little while later Katie, my co-worker, the ESL teacher, and Xavier's mother, came in to the library.
"Hey Xavier! What's going on?" She asked brightly.
Xavier looked up from his book and said,
"I screamed today."
"Oh no." Katie looked very serious.
"Xavier, what did mommy say about screaming. When do you scream?"
"ONLY during emergencies."
"Yes. That's correct. Then why were you screaming?"
"Because I was outside playing with Sebastian and Sebastian was screaming."
"Was Sebastian screaming because of an emergency?"
"No. He was screaming because Mary was running."
Xavier answered honestly, looking up a his mother with his wide blue eyes.
I was astounded.
But more astounded than me was the thirteen-year-old ESL student I tutored after school every day. Tristan Chen was a giant of a boy. He stood at 6 feet tall (the middle school volleyball team and basketball team were dying to recruit him), gawking down at Xavier. I had scolded Tristan the other day for confusing the lower case letters "b" and "d" - I doubt Tristan knew the word 'emergency.'
One day, during lunch break, instead of joining all the teachers and their gossip in the Teacher's Lounge, I ended up sitting outside on the bleachers with Xavier - the autumn sun shining down on us. The green artificial turf was covered with crunchy brown leaves. The air was chilly but the sun was warm. Xavier was wearing a soft blue beanie+baseball hat with the flaps pulled over his ears.
Xavier pointed at the sun,
"The sun is shining."
"Yes, it is." I said. I was feeling a little melancholy.
"The sky is blue." He pointed at the sky above us.
I looked up. It was inded.
"You're wearing a red jacket. Hahlmunee is wearing red, too."
Mrs. Jun, Xavier's nanny, was wearing rouge pants with a white floral pattern. For some reason,
after Xavier pointed this out, it looked even brighter, bursting with life.
I tugged at Xavier's furry hat, "Yes, and you're wearing blue."
He giggled and then pointed at the thermos I was holding.
"Is that hot?"
"It is inside."
"Be careful."
Then Xavier was quiet for a long time.
"What are you thinking about?" I asked.
The little boy's face twisted into a storm. He looked at me,
"Do dinosaurs bite?"
"What?"
"Do dinosaurs bite?" Xavier asked again. He wasn't joking. He was asking a perfectly serious question and he wanted a perfectly serious answer.
"I'm not sure." I paused, "I think they might but I don't know because I've never met one."
"Oh."
He looked disappointed, then his face brightened.
"Dora the Explorer, met a dinosaur."
He couldn't pronounce 'explorer' very clearly.I had to have him repeat the word a few times and he became quite frusturated.
It was through this conversation that I realized something.
If Xavier could talk like one of us (adults/older ppl), this meant that he could think like one of us. Right? Wrong.
Xavier's amazing ability wasn't that he knew things that other children didn't know but that he could express verbally, in clearly constructed sentences, what a 2 year old was thinking inside.
That could be genius, but different from how I had first perceived 'genius' to be. I had expected brilliance from him, in that he would one day (maybe even now) understand things that I could never understand and explain them to me and the rest of the world.
That day though, I realized that talking to Xavier and seeing the wonder and seriousness in his eyes was refreshing, not because he understood things that little kids could never understand, but because he was seeing and understanding things for the first time -
It made me feel like I was opening my eyes and seeing the world for the first time.
