In other words, an exceptional brainiac.

I have a sister who’s a piano savant. She could play perfectly from about the age of 3. If she could hear it, she could play it and even though her 3-year-old feet could barely reach the pedals. While barely looking at the keys, she could play anything perfectly. She never took lessons and actually could not. She tried in her 30s to learn the piano with a teacher, to read music, and was simply unable, so went back to just hearing a musical piece and then being able to play it with perfection. I was, of course, wildly jealous but I instead got naturally curly hair. My sister got the ability to play the piano like an angel from heaven, but her hair was straight and dull beige.

Her grandson, whose name is Noel, inherited my sister’s savantism, only his is a bit different. He is a prehistoric reptile savant, a dinogeek of the first order.

Noel was a born paleontologist and this is when I first realized it: I took him to a toy store when he was 3 and there was a large bin filled with all sorts of colorful plastic prehistoric creatures. He pulled them out, one at a time, named them, said where they were born and if they were carni/herbi/omnivores and how many years ago they lived, if they laid eggs or gave birth to live young, their approximate size and weight. It was bizarre. I was speechless, mesmerized, and when I looked behind me, a crowd had gathered, also mesmerized.

Noel is grown now, in college and guess what he’s studying? His college professors of paleontology tell him he knows more than they do about those Big Green Lizards of Yore.(Henceforth, BGLs.)

I’m a believer. He spends his summers lying on his belly where the temps are over 100 degrees in some Western state in some hills or prairies uncovering some creature a zillion years old the size of a Boeing 707 with a toothbrush. For Noel, that is ecstasy. But he also collects small stuff. Noel can walk across a barren land and spot a bone/claw/tooth the size of a comma, pick it up and know its entire history. He even found an almost full megalodon tooth on a dig in New Jersey, and we’re hoping he one day finds a whole one. It is flat out wonderful!

Noel occasionally comes to my home with boxes of bones and fossils, spreads them out on my table, we spend the entire day talking about them, and I am in heaven. You see, when I was very young, I wanted to go out west or out somewhere and dig up dinosaur bones. I thought nothing in life could be more thrilling. I hadn’t even heard the word “paleontologist” back then, but it’s what I wanted to be.

However, when I was growing up one of the most over-used phrases ever, was “It simply isn’t done” and the “it” part of that sentence was “young LC thinking she can roar around the world digging up the stupid bones of some dirty old horrid animals no one cares about.” It simply was not done. “Young LC bringing home jars of fossils, bugs and worms, snails, eggs, frogs and snakes thinking we should all applaud her craziness when it just simply isn’t done. Young ladies simply do not do such things.” Well, I did.

So, I caved and obeyed my parents who insisted I go to college and while there learn shorthand and typing “because those things will feed you, LC.” And of course, they were right — they did.

But finally, oh the joy, after so many long decades, my sister’s grandson Noel, who was in fact encouraged to love everything having to do with BGLs, comes to see me with tons of very ancient things in boxes and tells me all about them, and he does all the digging part. What can possibly be better than that? See folks? If we wait and wish hard and long enough, we often get what we’ve always dearly wanted, even when it simply isn’t done!

LC Van Savage is a local writer. Contact her at LCVS@comcast.net, or visit LCVanSavage.com.