The Retro Kid "Hippy".

There is a hippy in our house. He is very short but definitely a hippy.

He doesn't have long hair. He has curly hair. It is not his fault if it won't grow long in the traditional hippy manner. However, he has a signature which is definitely pure "hippiness".

I heard it today. He was trying to load his favourite computer game onto my computer (which he usurped with great, unchallengeable authority, by simply ignoring me), when something untoward happened: there was nothing but silence at the opening credits - the sound was down.

"Oh Maaaan!", he said, just like a Sixties hippy would have done, in the same circumstance. He said it again, a moment later, when something else wasn't right: "Oh Man!".

The "hippy" of the house is little Tiarnan, aged two. It is hilarious to hear this little boy of the 21st Century sounding so much like a hippy of the sixties, in his choice of words - and the long, lazy way in which he says this catchphrase. The mystery of it is where he ever heard the phrase at all: you see, none of us have ever said it around him, or indeed at all. We just don't say: "Oh Man!"

I can only presume that he must have heard it on television once, and now echoed not only the phrase, but the manner of its phrasing - the pacing, the long drawn out expression and the stress on "Man". The whole effect is that one is in the presence of a toddler hippy.

It is a funny household in which even the littlest ones sometimes seem like little old men. Or should I say: "Oh Man!"

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, 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, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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