Mad SCIENCE!!

Camp season is slowly winding down. It will be a relief to be able to walk Rachel to school instead of driving her clear across Arlington, but I'll miss hearing about all her adventures in the various camps we've enrolled her in. This week it's sports camp; last week it was Mad Science.

She was in the science camp with Simone (the other smart kid in her kindergarten class; Simone is known as G.G. -- gorgeous genius, according to her parents; Rachel is G.G.2) and Simone's brother, Elias. So it was a reunion of sorts, which was nice. Rachel made all kinds of cool stuff -- a birdhouse (with birdseed that I really need to hang from a tree outside), poison (made with antifreeze), crystals, and a bug catcher (with a net, that she left open at the bottom, which she said was a fire escape so the bugs could get out in case of a fire. I'm laughing as I write this).

One of the days when Drew went to pick Rachel up, he ran into one of the counselors, a retired medical school professor named Roger, who the kids called "Mr. Roger." He said some quite flattering things about Rachel -- that she really stood out, even among members of her peer group (i.e., the smart kids) -- he said she was very mature, perceptive, and sensitive. He said she's unusually expressive and perceptive and you really see that when she's around kids her age and added that she she has a very vivid personality. When he sees that in a kid, he said, he wants to tell the parents so they can nurture that.

"Yeah, we do," Drew replied, saying that we read to her regularly.

"I'd really like to see her in 20 years and see how she turns out," Mr. Roger replied.

On Friday, I met Mr. Roger -- when I picked Rachel up from camp, she was snuggled up next to one of the junior counselors, Anna, who looked like she was in high school, listening to Mr. Roger tell them the story of Gilgamesh. I came in at the end. "We HAVE Gilgamesh at home," I said to Rachel, and Mr. Roger said most people don't even understand the reference. He and I had a nice talk about our jobs and about science camp, and that night Drew brought out our copy of Gilgamesh, retold in prose, and I started reading it after dinner, and got very deeply into it. I'm considering bringing it on vacation to the Outer Banks next weekend.