A secret beauty therapist, Singapore

Yesterday, I noted something strange about Syahidah's toes. They had been painted. Now, this is no ordinary circumstance for Syahidah, for she never paints her toenails - or fingernails, for that matter. Furthermore, these were no ordinary colours. The big toe was in pink. The next toe was in green. The one next to it in blue - and so on, in a multi-coloured splash of colour. It was quite surprising.

Seeing me looking at them, she smiled and said: "Tiarnan did it."

Then she told me the tale. Tiarnan, twenty-two months, had held each toe in his right hand and took a marker pen in his left hand and carefully, most, most carefully, coloured in each toe nail, without straying onto the skin of the foot. It was quite neatly done. Then, when he had done with one colour and one toe, he would swap pens and do the next toe in a different colour, until the whole foot was done.

He was most pleased with his handiwork.

Now, what I wonder could have inspired him to do this? Well, when my mother and sister were here, he noticed, one day that they had painted their nails: one in red, the other with white tips. I can only imagine that this observation, of a couple of weeks before, had stuck with him and so, when presented with the unadorned foot of Syahidah, he thought to do something about it.

At a distance, one wouldn't know that it had not been done with nail varnish. It seems that even an ordinary marker pen can do a reasonable job of it, when done with care - by a toddler.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two 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, 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.)