The Next Ken Jennings

Scott has the most amazing memory I have ever seen in a kid or an adult. We realized he had a freaky photographic memory about a year ago when he would be in the tub, playing with his spongy letters. Each letter is one of 5 random colors. While Scott would be looking for a letter, he would say something like, "Where's the red B?" or "Where's the purple V?" He knew the colors of all the letters in the tub. A few months later we added a second set of spongy letters to the tub (slightly different than the first set) because he was frustrated he couldn't spell words that had more than one of a particular letter. Now he know the colors for each set of letters.

Since then he has showed us that he also knows the colors of all the letter magnets on the refrigerator. He also has a set of plain old wooden blocks with colored letters on a pair of opposite sides. Not only does he know the color of each letter, but he knows which letters go together. In other words he could see a letter "M" and without looking know that there is a red "C" on the other side.

Throughout the past year Scott has been pretty entertained typing words he knows in Microsoft Word. Last January, just before his 3rd birthday, I showed him how to change the color of the text. He caught on pretty quickly and started typing this:

It didn't surprise me that he was typing "babyeinstein" since he had been doing that for a while, but I realized that he was being very deliberate about the colors he was choosing. While he finished typing, I ran downstairs and looked at the intro screen on the Baby Einstein DVD and wrote down all the colors. When I came back upstairs to see the final result, I saw that the colors were all exactly correct.

The past few months Scott has been really into numbers -- specifically addresses. First he was excited to know that his house was "1773". Then as we would go to other places, he would always notice and remember the addresses. He tells me that he wants to go to "1777" (Tanner's house) or "1240" (the church). He sees an address once and it is locked in his brain. About a month ago we were driving in the car and he asked me what Aunt D's (Cindy) address was. I didn't know so we called and Cindy told me it was 307. Scott said, "No, it is 12345." I just thought, ok - sure - it's 12345. And the discussion was over. Then 2 weeks later, Mom was in the car with Scott and he saw a sign with 307 on it. He said, "307 - That's Aunt D's number."

So I am thinking I should start him now watching Jeopardy and maybe by the time he is old enough to be a contestant, he will have memorized enough answers to make a fortune! I think it is a great plan, but guess we should still plan to save for retirement and college, just in case :)