How to get Daddy's attention

Tiarnan and I were playing a game, today. More specifically, he decided that he wanted to play the game and so I had to join in.

The game was a simple one. For Tiarnan, pillows had been transformed into guns with magical powers: one simply pointed the pillow and made a "peeoww" or "berrr" noise and Daddy would respond by being wounded. Daddy, of course, was allowed to use a pillow gun in return. I chose a very small one (his), he chose a very big one (mine). Clearly, he wanted to outgun me - or outpillow me.

At one point, he had done too thorough a job of pillow shooting me. I lay on the bed in an unresponsive state - not replying to his repeated queries.

He had a problem: how to resurrect the "dead".

He also had a solution. While I lay there, eyes closed, in imitation of an underpaid extra on a filmic battlefront, he did something unexpected. I heard it, a sound I didn't want to hear. My computer mouse clicking and moving across the table.

I awoke at once, suddenly cured of my mortal injuries, to see my little son, Tiarnan, twenty-six months, grinning at me, mischievously.

He knew that would work. Tugging at me was useless. Speaking to me was useless - but messing with my computer...well, that was guaranteed to resurrect the dead.

We played on - but I didn't dare play too dead, again, lest he take the messing with the computer route to revive me.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)