THE BEST (SMARTEST) KID EVER?

Zoe made a room full of women (OK... it was two women) gasp Monday.

Our exciting night on the town together consisted of sitting in a Chevy dealership waiting room as our car got what was supposed to be a quick fix. In said waiting room was a kid's table full of Legos and an easel with a magnetic board and a ledge full of magnetized letters.

A baby can only be expected to put the same letters on the same magnetic board so many times before it becomes redundant. So, eventually, Zoe decided to liven the game up... and proceeded to swing her arms wildly across the ledge, sending a red A and a yellow T and a green P flying around the room.

She looked up at me with a smirk we've grown to understand to mean "I know I wasn't supposed to do that, but damnit it was fun!" I raised my eyebrows back at her and asked -- rhetorically, I thought -- "And just who do you suppose is going to clean up that mess?"

She dropped to her butt, reached for the nearby purple W, and put it back on the ledge. She looked up at me with a sense of accomplishment. "Thank you," I said. And she reached for a pink V. That's when I actually heard one of the women gasp.

One after another, she picked up the letters and put them back on the ledge. After each, she'd look at me. I'd say "thank you" and she'd move on to the next.

Somewhere between the fifth and seventh trip -- once it became clear that Zoe did, indeed, intend to pick up every one of those dozen or so letters -- I could hear the women whispering to each other. I don't know for sure what they were saying, but I've convinced myself it was something very, very flattering.