“OK, so next time we need to fashion coordinate all this because I get tablecloths and stuff that you can get at Big Discounts for Your Loft that are easy and can be thrown away if they are a mess, but we need to just eat better and eat on lace and stuff because we deserve it and I just need you to build us a real castle hall to eat in so we can live right, Grayson!”
“There's no point in eating inside,outside, Eddie. No.”
“But we're Ludlows and so we come from people who used to feast fabulously and we deserve this!”
“No. Not building it.”
“Grayson, you are such a pain!”
“OK. No.”
Thus began and ended another standoff between eight-year-old Edwina Ludlow and her six-year-old brother Grayson, an interaction that made his neighbor, Mrs. Gladys Jubilee Trent, smile.
“Grayson Ludlow is going to be one of those ones,” she said to Mrs. Velma Stepforth.
“Yep,” Mrs. Stepforth said. “He'll probably get as big and tall as his grandfather and have some variation of the same big voice, because, quiet as he keeps it, his voice is already super deep for his age just like Lil' Robert's and Edwina's – but that ain't gonna be what people fear. He's one of those who will shout quietly and work with those hands, and suddenly you're going to hear that no coming at you from the buildings around you, from the finances around you – everywhere.”
“Yep,” Mrs. Jubilee Trent said. “Gracie showed me the Lee puzzle and play room they keep for all the kids since they live between our house and the Ludlow house, and while I was there Grayson was just quietly counting out his Lego blocks so he could make Pythagorean triangles out of one of Vanna's old geometry books. Unit by unit – and then he started making squares by building those triangles back to back at the hypotenuse. He was on the phone with Vertran's math genius friend Louisa, and Gracie was just picking out Lego colors for him 'because old Py needed a fashion upgrade.' The boy is a quant with a bent toward engineering.”
“He's also good at sheer calculation,” Mrs. Stepforth said. “My husband was talking out loud, organizing his pocket change the other day … .”
Mrs. Jubilee Trent laughed, knowing Mr. Thomas Stepforth was a billionaire.
“ … And so Grayson just added up his numbers and spelled it out in Legos for him and left the room to go paint with little Velma. Tom eventually looked up from his calculator and almost fell out of his chair on the double-take.”
“Which means that not only can Grayson calculate faster than Tom can punch in numbers on a calculator, but also so well that he can physically represent the numbers in a build accurately,” Mrs. Jubilee Trent said.
“And then there's this spelling bee thing,” Mrs. Stepforth said. “They had to postpone it again, but meanwhile, Grayson is out here talking with Vanna's college friends with words they are all using in their essays. So he's not just in math doing amazing things – he also has vocabulary. He just doesn't often choose to use it.”
“Well, some conversations are not worth all that,” Mrs. Jubilee Trent said. “It is a good thing he is getting practice in on just the temptations of building castle halls for people to eat on lace tablecloths in.”
“Practicing getting in the right answer to a lot of foolishness that will be proposed to him to build: NO,” Mrs. Stepforth said. “Speaking of which: Vertran has started Grayson on computer programming.”
“Probably taking to it like hogs take to truffles,” Mrs. Jubilee Trent said.
“Yep, he definitely is – but then you know our actually nine-year-old nine-year-old grandson Milton asked them to write some code to get the local vending machines to vend free snacks.”
“No,” Mrs. Jubilee Trent said.
“Grayson didn't even bother – he just hit him with the 'no' look, and Milton went on to find something else to do!” Mrs. Stepforth said.
“OH – he is entering the grandparent version of the art of no,” Mrs. Jubilee Trent said. “How we grandparents shout quietly and rearrange grandchildren's entire plans for their day with just a look from us.”
“Yep,” Mrs. Stepforth said. “Conservation of energy, maximization of 'If you don't go somewhere else and be quiet!'