The world is full of crashing bores

O has never been terribly interested in other people, other kids, in particular. Even with adults, unless they are really interesting (say if they smoke in front of him, or profess to be a superhero or something), his mode of interaction by default would be to talk at them rather than really engage in a conversation with them.

Anyhow, this used to bother me a little but now I've come to accept this is who he is, even though school teachers may not agree. Yeah, they kinda made their minds up that he has something.

Since the summer started his normal bedtime of 9pm has changed to more like 10:30 and it's usually around midnight when he actually falls asleep. He reads, he sneaks out to chat to us, claims he is hungry and raids the fridge for Mars bars. Couple of nights ago he sneaked out and it was just me and him; he sat next to me and was talking to me about some fort he's designing and about bionicles. So I said, "hey this is really nice, you and me just sitting here late at night, chatting". Without looking at me, he said "yeah". "You know, when you are a bit older, you wouldn't really want to be chatting to me like this". "Yeah, when I am a teenager right?". "Yeah, that's right".

"Hey I want to ask you a question."

"What."

"You know how come kids they are really interested in other people, like they care about what other people think about them, and what other people like to do, and so on. Then some kids are not really that interested in other people, but are more interested in things, like science, nature, bionicles, and so on. I think you are more or the second type."

"Yeah."

"Why is that so? Why are you more interested in stuff than people?"

And so his tone changed, from one of passive one word answers to positive lecture mode, beginning with the words "Well, you see..."

"Well, you see, people are not as interesting as nature, and magic, and science. Nature is fascinating and does all kinds of fascinating stuff. And science too. People don't do that stuff."

"I see."

Can't really argue with him on that. People can be terribly predictable and dull, not to mention ignorant. But nature, magic, bionicles, monsters, these provide endless possibilities; he is right, these "stuffs" are far more interesting than people. So who could blame him?