My grandson explains how old he is, more or less

Sunday was the little guy’s second birthday. If any adult at the party asked how old he is now, he flashed a seemingly (but not really*) random number of fingers. It seemed to satisfy the adults, and then he could go back to playing…

* CORRECTION: You know what? I realized that, in the interests of emphasizing cuteness, I described what the little guy is doing inaccurately, and even in a way that made him seem less smart than he is — which I would never want to do. Actually, he is conscientiously doing his best to answer the question. My wife tried to teach him, in the days running up to his birthday, how to hold up two fingers. Seeing that that was kind of tricky for him, she showed him that, as an alternative, he could hold up one finger of each hand. So, you see, what he’s doing in the picture is giving you as complete an answer as he can, covering all possible ways of answering: He’s doing his best to show two fingers with his right hand, while holding up one finger with his left. He just doesn’t understand that it’s an either-or thing.