Tip of the Iceberg

Category travel
Last night, on a flight from Reno to Vegas, I shared a row of seats with an adorable 18-month-old girl and her mother. At one point in the flight, the little girl was pointing at various things and saying, "Eeee. Eeee." Which I wrote off as being merely cute until I realized that, every time she said "Eeee", she was actually pointing to the letter E. I turned to her mother:

"Wait, is she...?"
"Yes, she's learning her alphabet."
"That's amazing. I'm still learning my alphabet."

Following various other displays of (what, not being a parent, I assume to be) disproportionately early signs of intelligence, I witnessed evidence that her mother is also either intelligent or, at the least, resourceful: the girl was watching a DVD on a portable player, and listening to it with headphones nearly identical to my own. I have a large head; she does not. But the headphones stayed snugly in place because her mother had stacked several napkins on her head, perfectly padding the distance between.