baby geniuses to dumbass adults

Roommate secured us a babysitting gig last night for 6 kids (3 families). Mormons are a networked bunch. Morman lawschool professor hits up mormon law student for potential babysitter friends, mormon law student hits up my roommate and since I’m an "honorary mormon" – badabing badaboom we have a job.

There were two six year old boy twins, one five year old boy, two four year old girl twins, and one three year old boy.
A rambunctious group.

SJ has eight siblings and I’ve had JP to teach me a few things about babysitting survival so I figured we were set to take on as many minions as they could throw at us. Interestingly enough, I feel like I had foot up on SJ. The boys were "watching a movie" and by watching a movie I mean making a general mess in the office while the movie played in the background. SJ walked in and tried to make everyone calm down, "Everyone sit on the couch!" Adorable. She thought that would work. "If any of the kids in my family roused around like that while we were watching a movie everyone would yell at them." I’m beginning to realize, moment by moment, that SJ’s family is not exactly typical on most standards – including mormon.

I do realize that over the last year this diary has evolved into an anthropological study of Mormonism from the researcher’s perch as hallmate to roommate. It fascinates me how much of an impact my fringe contact with this religion (of which I’d never remotely known much about previously) has had on my world and religious views. I find Mormonism fascinating in itself as well because its exclusivity breeds intense antagonistic stereotypes in general and especially in other christians (my mother’s pastor calls mormonism a "cult"). In fact as I think on it now I have never before recognized such a distinct anthropological case study in real life as I have in this religion. I almost want to turn back to an anthro major with Mormonism as my thesis in mind.

Amidst all the frenzy I noticed one of the 6 year old boys drawing only doors. So I asked. "Where do all the doors lead?" "That’s the question." I didn’t know what to say to that. I felt my child psychologist glasses slide down my nose, "Why is that door blocked off?" "It’s bricks so when carter opens it he walks into a wall!" I recalled an episode of Sanctuary where Druid has to choose between two doors to transport behind. One is a brick wall and he will transport to death. Caleb continued drawing paths leading from the doors to various pits of death which he described to me. Alligators, snakes (he’d been to the zoo earlier that day). None of the doors lead to a happy ending. Except one. Its path lead to a U-turn and back to the start. 

I meant to ask Caleb if I could keep the drawing, but in the ensuing messes that sprung up I forgot.

Caleb used five minutes and a red marker to draw out a question that most of us pose later in life. Which door and where does it lead? In one of the great cheesy movies of 1999, Baby Geniuses, the film suggests that babies are "geniuses" but they lose their knowledge when they "cross over" at I think age 2. Baby Geniuses was widely eviscerated by critics (probably rightly so), but I find the film’s ending assertion valid. Children are intensely smart. Is that ‘genius’ lost at a certain age, is it hidden under social development?

Awkward Moment of the Week
On the phone with Robbie talking about Star Trek movie.
Me: "I’ll beam you wave when we decide what we’re doing tonight." *hang up*
SJ: "beam you a wave?"
Me: "We were talking about Star Trek and Firefly mixed in there. Shut up."

This is why I limit my socialization. It’s better for everyone.