The Graduate

My son is too smart.
Way, way too smart. He makes me look like a slacker. This must stop.
His latest exploit? He decided that he was tired of the BS of high school. He didn't fit in with the other kids who talked about video games and the Jonas Brothers, when my kid is more interested in physics and jazz. So he took the California High School Proficiency Exam, or CHSPE. If he passes it, he can leave high school and start at a Junior College.
Of course he passed. Next week he starts an Astronomy course at the College of the Redwoods. In two years he intends to transfer from CR to Berekely, applying as a legacy admission because one of the few things his denser old man was able to accomplish was graduating from Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall).
I don't know about you, but the fact that my kid is finished with High School at the age of 16 is somewhat daunting. At 16 I was barely able to form coherent sentences and had a dim, dark view of life and love and all that. Okay, when I was 17 I was elected vice president of my high school, but that was mostly a fluke because everyone thought my election campaign--I called myself "the garbageman" and promised that I'd do the garbage work so that the president could concentrate on bigger things. But that was really the highlight of my school years.
My son, on the other hand, has dispensed with such foolishness and has his eyes on the prize. He wants to be a physicist, either a teacher or a professor doing experiments. This child is so driven that he's been accepted as a helper on a local physics professor's experiment at Humboldt State University. He tried to explain it to me but all I heard was a monkey clapping cymbals in my head.
What do you do when your child is smarter than you? Last week, mother's day, the boy's mom and I sat in a cafe listening to our child play double bass with a very good little jazz trio. Suddenly she burst into tears, saying it was all going too fast. I suppose we love our children so much it's hard to let go of them. Even when they continually show us up for the dolts that we are.
Sigh. Oh well. He starts college next week. Maybe that will slow him down.