Thick as a Brick

©2011 Joel Durham Jr, all rights reserved

(obviously inspired by the single-track album by Jethro Tull)

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Editors' Choice Award

“He will,” said the wife gently. Focusing on the baby, she said, “See, look. There are handles. You pull it open to get the shapes out. See?”

“Honey, he doesn’t understand a word, and he’s looking at your cleavage. Um, not in the same way I do.”

The baby, Craig, was nearing 2 years old and rarely grasped the concepts of simple toys. He couldn’t yet speak. The ball full of colorful shapes, in and of itself, entertained him, but the idea of removing the shapes from the ball and passing them through their matching holes…well, to his parents, Tom and Gail Morrison, he just didn’t get it.

Craig invariably scored incredibly low on baby and toddler intelligence tests administered by pediatricians. Gail was already in touch with preschools for not-so-gifted children, so to speak.

“Smells like supper is ready,” said Tom, and he and Gail left Craig in the living room, in his playpen, with the shape ball and a toy guitar.

As they ate at the kitchen island, they didn’t hear something, something more important than an IQ in the stratosphere.

Quietly, in the playpen, clad in his onesie and leaning casually on the padded corner of the cage, he’d picked up the guitar. After seconds of experimentation, began to play a perfect middle C chord, to the beat of a metronome in his glorious, brilliant brain.