Despite now having a child of my own, I still find myself afflicted with a very pernicious, albeit mostly harmless condition. I’ve been searching the web for support groups, and have stumbled across many useful ones (Pine Cone Eaters Anonymous, and Maimed by the Wii Fit for example), but have not found others willing to help cope with my issue. For you see, I have (what I call) “age-skill confusion syndrome” (ASCS).
What are the symptoms of this particular condition? Well, there’s only really one. I have the inability to properly understand at what age certain skills are acquired by children, and in many cases can’t even decipher how old a child is, despite most of the time knowing when they were born.
I know, this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s very embarassing. Consider the following exchange with my wife:
Kim: Clean up the living room, Benjamin is coming over to visit.
Me: Why? He’s only 3 months old, it’s not like he’s going anywhere.
Kim: Uh, he’s 18 months old? And he can walk?
Me: Oh.
Or this one:
Me: Do we have baby food in case they don’t bring any?
Kim: For who?
Me: Abby?
Kim: She’s in SECOND GRADE.
ME: Oh.
I can’t pinpoint exactly how many others have this particular issue, although I hope that there is simply an unreported “silent mass” of people that can’t figure these things out either. I would assume that the majority (if there is one) would consist mostly of folks that are a) single or first time parents and b) men. Women seem to know these things, or at least have the capacity to remember them once they hear them once. I, on the other hand, can recount shot for shot rounds of golf played on Tiger Woods ’09 from 3 months ago, but can’t seem to remember with any regularity whether a 3 year old kid can form complete sentences or has teeth.
If you suffer, or know someone that suffers from ASCS, please let them know that they are not alone. And be kind when they ask whether seventh graders can read yet.
