The Big Biscuit: Isa and the Caution Mower

I'm not a parent (although some day I'd like to be - I still believe in that "soul mate" stuff) but I can enjoy, as much as parents can, the blissful innocence found in the utterrings of children.

When I was two years old, I used to say - or so my mom tells me - "heddigotter" for helicopter and "the big lorter" for ocean (I can only guess that I was trying to say "the big water"). My sister, Lauren, a year younger but a bit more mentally advanced than me, called the big red truck with a siren, hoses, and ladders a "fire $#%&."

I was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Mom's side was from nearby Fayetteville, where we lived when my dad was in Vietnam. That year, when I was five, my mom, Lauren and me, and my aunt Betty Jo and her one-year old daughter, Melissa, were heading to Holden's Beach on the Atlantic for a week. We passed a large mower cutting the grass on the side of the road. On the back of the big vehicle was a bright orange diamond-shaped sign that said: "Caution! Mower." There was some construction going on, so Betty Jo, who was driving, said she had to slow down to get around the caution mower. I saw the sign, but being only five years old, I asked her, "What's a 'caution mower'?" To this day, she still teases me about that - good naturedly, of course.

I am often reminded of the "caution mower" and how I pronounced things - you know how moms like to remind you of such things. I had "heddigotter" and "the big lorter" and my sister had, well...I'm sure you've figured that one out by now.

My niece Isabella, on the other hand (her mom calls her "Isa"), will be three next month, but two years ago, a few months after she turned one - barely one year old- went straight to the ocean (we all lived in Venice Beach, California at the time), pointed, and correctly identified it as "agua." Her mom, Claudia, is teaching her Spanish, and my brother tells me that Isabella - again, not yet three - "can now turn on the computer and then access the internet and find her favorite websites from the favorites list. She prints out coloring pages and pictures on her own. I came in the room the other night to see what she was doing; she was playing a Diego snowboarding game. I'm hoping next month she can load my Turbotax for me and start on my taxes."

I was two and couldn't properly pronounce "water;" Isabella had just turned one and not only could she say "water," she was already bilingual.

Precocious, I wasn't.