I know I shouldn't intervene

Noah is smart. Scary smart. He  had four Thomas the Tank Engine puzzles of 24 pieces each. He mixed them all together, so 96 pieces were mingling in a heap on the floor. Ten minutes later I returned to the room to find 4 completed Thomas puzzles. It's unnerving.

If you want Noah to sound extra wise, you ask him about trains, dinosaurs, or Noah's Ark. He is a little dino-encyclopedia.

When moms in this little Texas town get tired of sacrificing their children to the devouring wind, they take them to the mall. At the food court (which has three choices: Chinese, pizza, or frozen yogurt) there is a little Texas themed play area. There is a slide that looks like a barrel, a little tower of plastic hay bales, and a giant plastic bull kids can climb on. My kids love it. I took them there when we first moved here, before the truck containing their furniture, toys, books, and blankies arrived (it was a dark time in our little world). They played for almost an hour on these three little structures.

I took them back today, and several other kids were frolicking in the plastic rodeo as well. One was a blond girl, about five years old, who did nothing but growl, jump off a foot tall plastic horseshoe and flap her arms for fifteen minutes. It was the kid that makes you wonder.

Noah, the dino-king, is not to be out-growled. The girl was laying under the slide poking her head out to roar at anyone who passed by. The other kids ignored her, or took a wide path around her. Not my little man. He knelt down less than a foot from her face and declared with deep conviction, "ROAR!"

The little blond was momentarily taken aback. Quickly recovering, she roared back. I didn't know where her parents were; no one was in the general vicinity. And I'm not going to be the mom that intervenes for her baby. So I let them roar it out. This went on for some time. After every growl the girl would check to see if Noah was defeated. He would scrunch up his beautiful little face and unleash an equal if not greater GRRRR. If his three-year-old mind could grasp sarcasm, I'm sure he would have pointed at his manic little sister biting the plastic bull, and uttered, "I live with that! You think a couple wussy growls are enough to scare me?"

Finally the girl wriggled out from under the slide. "I am a BIG dinosaur!" Noah declared triumphantly.

"No!" the girl said, straightening up to her full three foot height. "I'm five years old, already. I'm bigger than you." As if to prove her point, she stood very close to him and tried to tower. "I am the BIG dinosaur. I am a big FLYING dinosaur." she stated rather pompously.

Noah quirked an incredulous eyebrow (I wonder where he got that from). "You mean a pterodactyl?" he replied. It was said in a way that proves he perhaps gets sarcasm better than I thought. It was said with an attitude implying, "You mean a pterodactyl, idiot?" And then he turned back to me and ignored her. The great she-dino had succumbed.

I don't want to raise that kid, the smart one, who has to rub everyone's nose in it. I don't want to raise the brilliant jerk. I'm not raising Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.

But in a moment of blatant parental failure, I gave the boy a high five.

She was being a punk. And it gives me a slight bit of comfort that when playground time comes, my little man won't stand for it.

...Let's just hope that high five doesn't earn him his first bloody nose.