It's no child's play — Good Lord, what next?

Childlike wonders are taking place in our fast-changing, technology-driven, one-surprise-at-a-time world.

No matter whether you live inside or outside this great global village, the charades of gifted children are always a delight. The U.S. is often seen as the land for underage geniuses — teenage pop idols, precocious film and TV stars, child prodigies in music and sport: American whiz-kids — who now and again steal the limelight. You've heard it all — about Mozart and so many of his modern-day peers. You've even seen awesome feats by teenage Olympic swimmers and gymnasts. You've heard stories about fledgling Einsteins, spelling wizards, brilliant mathematical whiz-kids, the seven-year-old boy who paints like Rembrandt, and the five-year-old girl who bounces five basketballs all at once! Therefore, another story about some young overachiever doesn't come to you as a surprise. But, for some strange reason, this report about an innocent toddler going where only adults have gone before, lingered like a mile marker down memory lane.

Local police in Sand Lake, Michigan, reported that a little boy — only four years old — drove his mother's car to a nearby video store when everyone was fast asleep, in the middle of the night! Even though he was unable to reach the accelerator (his tiny knees were probably half way across the seat, and toddler feet suspended in mid-air several inches, if not feet, above the brakes or the accelerator), the boy managed to put the car in gear, and the idling engine provided enough power to take him slowly to the video store, a quarter of a mile from his home, about 1.30 a.m. (Mind you, we're talking about a car with automatic transmission that starts to roll once the gear is put on drive.)

Slow trip

Finding the store closed at that late hour, the youngster began a slow trip back home. Zigzagging its way, and with its headlights off, the car caught the attention of police sergeant Osga, who initially thought he was following a driverless car that had slowly taken off after being left running at a gas station or some such place.

The car turned into the boy's apartment complex, banged into two parked cars, then backed up and struck the sergeant's car. That's when the cop got out and finally discovered the little boy inside. “He knew how to go from forward to reverse,” Osga said. Later, when the dust had settled, the mother apparently told the befuddled policeman how she had taught the boy to drive by letting him sit on her lap and steer the car on occasion.

The police chief at Sand Lake confirmed that no charges were being filed either against the minor or his mother. “He's only 4 years old. His mom didn't even know he was up that late,” the cop added to the local press.

Nobody is above the law, and definitely not, in a litigious country like the U.S. But here you have a little kid who staggers under the limbo stick of the law like he can actually slide under it like a pro. (Note: you have to be at least 16 to get a driver's licence in most American States.)

To all intents and purposes, the little boy did what he wanted to do, without anyone's permission, and simply whizzed past an otherwise hawkish legal system and its nonplussed enforcers. The law, walking on stilts as it is accustomed to do, just had to look the other way.

Truth is stranger than fiction, I thought, when I first read the news report about this four-year old. This is when you, the reader, might want to interject and point in the direction of another 13-year-old boy, Jordan Romero, from California, who recently climbed Mt. Everest. Not just another hillock in the Western Ghats, but the formidable Mount Everest at 29,035 feet above sea level! Mind you, this can be and is a severely arduous climb in inconceivably frigid temperatures and frighteningly depleted oxygen supplies (when it becomes difficult to distinguish between right and wrong, or even height and weight)!

Whether you care for it or not, such childlike wonders are taking place in our fast-changing, technology-driven, one-surprise-at-a-time world. Trust me, it is becoming increasingly hard now to separate the men from the boys. God knows how to make sense of it all, and where human intelligence is finally headed? Because, as we live longer, it will appear that babies in their cribs will be listening to lullabies on MP3 players or playing video games on BlackBerry while mom and dad are away shopping. As technological advances come at us so fast and furious as they have of late, the bewildered modern mind is down on its knees clutching at the roots of the tree next to him and begging the inevitable question: Good Lord, what next?

( The writer is a freelancer from the greater Boston area, U.S. His email id is: simplysham2003@yahoo. com )