Memory

I read Lileks sometimes, and I get jealous. His daughter is about the same age as mine, but his seems to be much more intellectually curious about the world, almost superhumanly smart. Maybe it's just the way he writes her.

What The Girl is good at is memorization. We'll be driving along and she'll start busting out with commercial copy and promos. "Dragontales is brought to you by a grant from the Ford Foundation and by Viewers Like You. Thank you!"

One night, she was asking to do something (I forget what). The Wife said it was too close to bedtime; maybe tomorrow. "Tomorrow?" The Girl asked, horrified.

At which point, Macbeth leapt into my head. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in its petty pace from day to day..." I said.

And without missing a beat, The Girl says, "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools..." and trails off. I started freaking out, because although my grasp of the soliloquy is weak, that sounded really familiar. So I looked it up online, and sure enough, that line comes just a little later in the speech. I tell my wife, and we're racking our brains trying to figure out where she heard this, because they sure don't quote Shakespeare on Dora the Explorer or Ed, Edd and Eddy.

Finally, The Wife figures it out. In the Disney movie Oliver & Co., one of the dogs, Francis the bulldog, who fancies himself an actor, is watching Macbeth on a television set. There's a small cut of the soliloquy, with characters speaking over the actor (which explains the gaps in the words she knows). It's throwaway background action, but she memorized it just the same. Scary, scary sponge-mind, she has.