Did you know ... ?

My first week back home I shared a bedroom with my nephew Kaveh, the five year old prodigy. I'd stay up late at the Round House Bar, drinking with cousins and high school friends. He'd stay up late reading a geometry book he found at the library. I'd sneak into my old bedroom around 1am. He'd be up reading and would say to me "Did you know pi is an irrational number?"

"What's that?" I'd ask. "You and Gramma made a cherry pie?"

Nonplussed he' d continue. "Did you know that the square root of 2 is also an irrational number?"

"What's an irrational number?" I'd ask, my toothbrush in my mouth. It was like coming back to the dorm room in college and finding your roommate studying for a calculus exam.

What tickled me most though was that less than a year ago I'd been given a child's introductory book to Hindu gods. Each page included a small box with the headline "Did you know ... ?" and would then go on to say something like "that Ganesh is one of the most beloved Hindu gods?" and then tell a story about Ganesh, or Vishnu or Shiva, etc.

Like the seasons cycling, here I was with the reincarnation of Marie Curie quizzing me on numbers in the same manner. "And did you know," he'd go on, "that if you added up all the angles of a triangle it equals 180 degrees?"

"And I bet they could dance on the head of a pin," I'd say. "Do you want the air conditioner on, or the windows open?"

Kaveh would shrivel up his nose and look at me. "I don't care."

Windows open and fan on, I'd crawl into my old bed, and he'd be in his across the room, light on the night stand illuminated, his small legs disturbing the blankets only slightly, the length of unused mattress spreading out in front of him like a workshop table with books and pens.

Half of the days on the island Kaveh made a To Do List for the next day. He'd list the games he was planning to play (Sorry and Monopoly and Old Maid), the relatives he was planning to visit, the meals he intended to eat. And at least one entry for his math book. Sometimes two. The next day he'd dutifully check each item as it was accomplished.

On the trip down to Columbus we stopped at the Thomas Edison Birthplace and Museum in Milan, Ohio. He wasn't too interested in the old furniture and clothes in the cottage along the canal. In each room on the tour he'd sit on the floor with his math book and read. He was a little interested in the old phonographs and the ticker tape machines on display, but mostly he was trying to tackle how to calculate a cube root.

I watched him pay no attention to the tour guide as she informed us that Thomas Edison was home schooled by his mother because he was deemed "unruly" by his teachers. And that as an adult he was never far from his laboratory. Couldn't even be bothered to come down to the sidewalk for a photo with his staff in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He just stuck his head out the third floor window.

Kaveh was happy to have his photo taken with his Ohio and Michigan cousins the week he was on the island. Big cheesy 5-year-old smile. Front row.