Tallen, More Than Meets The Eye!

Tallen is such a beautifully confusing puzzle. As he tends to keep to himself and doesn't even understand the concept of bragging, we have barely tapped into all the wonderful knowledge that is inside his mind.

Just last week, he walked by me, quietly singing a song that I have never heard. When I stopped him and asked him to sing louder, I realized that it was a song composed of the names of countries. I have no idea whether he made up this song himself, or if he heard it somewhere. It wouldn't be unusual for him to hear it only once and be able to memorize it instantly.

The other day, he was playing a computer game that required him to fill in the missing letters from words. Each word had a picture of the item above it on the screen. We weren't surprised that he was getting all of them right. Then came the word "satchel". We were certain that he probably wouldn't get that one as, even though he has probably seen bags that were like satchels, he has never heard them called that. Imagine our surprise when he filled in the missing letter and said, "satchel". His sister asked him, "Tallen, how do you know what a satchel is." He shrugged and smiled, "That's easy! It's just something you carry stuff in." Typical of his disorder, he did not understand that she actually wanted to know where he had learned the word and not what the bag was used for. lol

For a couple of months now, he has spent a lot of time on YouTube, watching videos of guys showing how to transform different Transformers toys into robots. We found this especially perplexing, since he does not and never has owned a Transformer. He has become a fixture, sitting in front of the computer, listening to these guys mumble instructions in barely audible voices, as they work their magic. He was thrilled when, on Thanksgiving Day, a relative gave him a Transformer. He positively beamed! "This is mine? You got me a Transformers airplane?" Once he was certain that it was for sure his, he asked for the instructions and set to work. It was so funny! He mumbled as he worked, telling step by step what he was doing, just like those guys on YouTube. Then I heard him say, "Soon, I will have my video ready to upload to YouTube!" We had to laugh at that one...