Zeus

Anyone who has ever met Ben knows that has a bit of an obsessive personality. Ever since he fell in love with Spiderman when he was 3, he has had something in his life that completely consumed his every thought and word. Like I said, his first love was Spiderman. He had a very pronounced speech problem when he was younger, virtually no one outside of the family (and sometime INSIDE the family) could understand a word he said, but he would sit for hours at his sisters' soccer practices & games going on and on and on about Spiderman. Thankfully, those soccer parents were like family and were very patient.

When Ben was 5, Michael took the kids to MOSI. We thought the girls might enjoy the Titanic exhibit there & Ben would like to play at the kids' center. Turns out, Ben fell COMPLETELY in love with the Titanic. For about 2 years, he talked ad nauseum about the beautiful ship and the tragedy in 1912. We had every book, he memorized each of the decks, he knew about the Astors and "Unsinkable" Molly Brown. I still don't know what about the Titanic was so intriguing to a 5 year old boy, but something had him hooked.

During the Titanic years, he also loved Harry Potter, but once he could read (and reread and reread) the HP books, the Titanic was all but forgotten. He had a new love. Thankfully, Megan & I had already read all of the books so we were able to talk to him about it, but we couldn't keep up. He had spells memorized and would ask us about details of the books that we had no clue about. Megan would even let him play HP Scene It with her & her friends...he was always a great asset to team.

Last May, he started reading The Series of Unfortunate Events books. All summer we heard about nothing but Count Olaf, Violet, Klaus & Sunny. He drew the V.F.D. symbol on every scrap of paper he could find and did extensive research about the books on the internet. (Apparently, he was not alone in his obsession, as he found many websites devoted to it).

About a month ago, he started reading Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. This is an adventure series based on Greek mythology. Can you guess where this is going? He talks about Zeus, Hera & the gang as though they are family friends. Yesterday at school they were learning how to make a power point presentation. Yesterday afternoon, he made this all by himself (look for some familiar faces on the third slide).




I wonder what his next obsession will be?