My kid is David Abernathy

Remember that Cars.com spot from a couple of years back?  It was a voiceover describing the early life of David Abernathy, "the most confident man in the world".  It described him shaking his doctor's hand at birth, in junior high, asking out the most popular 8th-grade girl with just a note that said "Call me", and various other exploits, like successfully performing open-heart surgery on a collapsed opera patron.

Well, my kid is kind of like that.

My kid is just, for lack of a better term, cool.  He's supremely comfortable just walking up to, and charming, complete strangers.  When he got bored at his last portrait shoot, he walked over to where the photographer was sitting on the floor taking pictures and just plopped down in the guy's lap.  He'd met him less than an hour before.

And everyone seems to know him.  I'm baffled by how many people my 23-month-old know who I don't know.  It's not just like he's one of those cute kids (though he totally is) who adults fawn over, either.  Other kids love him too.  Even older kids want to hang out with him.

For example, the coolest five-year-old I know is this hilarious kid in my children's church preschool class.  He's a smart, sweet, super-imaginative little boy, and I just adore him.  As luck would have it, his parents are in our large group Bible Study.  So the boys have gotten some time to play together once a week or so.

Now, every time I see this super-cool 5-year-old at church, he wants to know when he can hang out and play with my son again.  My son who isn't even quite two.  Aren't little kids supposed to be incredibly ageist?  After all, my son is, in comparison, a baby.  What kids want to play with a baby?

Girls aren't immune to his swagger, either.  In fact, I think he holds even more sway over the fairer sex.  Like the other morning when I was walking with him to the check-in station at his preschool.  This preschool/daycare also has a "track-out" program for older kids, i.e. elementary school kids who are in year-round programs and therefore need periodic childcare throughout the year.

Well, we passed a group of three girls, probably around 7 or 8, walking out of one of the classrooms.  One by one they turned, waved, . . . and greeted my son by name.  He flashed them a grin and waved back, then grabbed my hand and kept walking.

I looked down at my impossibly cool not-quite-two-year-old.

"Who were they?"

He looked back over his shoulder at them, looked at me, and very simply answered, "Girls."

I'm going to have my hands full with him in a few years.