I was the smartest person I knew until I met other people. Smug in my knowledge of the world, I went off to kindergarten as a mathematical prodigy, master of the complex equation "2 plus 2 equals 4." The first person I told this to, Tom Reddinger, was awed — he didn't even know there was a 4.

Other students, though, claimed to know this already, sneering at me and even going so far as to claim that "3 plus 3 equals 6," which I realize is now pretty much accepted doctrine but back then was considered shockingly heretical.

Desperate to prove my genius, I seized on a brilliant idea: When the teacher asked who could play the piano, I raised my hand, glancing smugly at the "3 and 3 is 6" people as I made my way to the front of the room. Time to show them.

My family didn't own a piano, and I'd never actually sat at one before, but I'd seen them on TV — and it looked pretty easy, you just pressed the keys. It was like typing, which I did all the time on my mother's old Royal portable — not pounding out any actual words, you understand, but plenty of interesting letters.

The teacher gave me about 15 seconds to discover that piano playing is both easy and hard — easy to make notes, hard to make them come together in anything resembling a song. I was a little miffed when she told me it was someone else's turn — another 10 seconds or so and I would have had it. (The next person up was a girl who played "The Farmer in the Dell," a pretty simple tune — heck, I'd been close to composing an entire symphony!)

The lesson of that first day of kindergarten was re-taught to me throughout my life: If you think you're pretty smart, you're not talking to enough people.

Many years later, sometime in the 1980s, it happened again. I was demonstrating a Commodore-64 computer to my Grandma Martha, who was just a couple laps away from ringing up a century of life on the planet.

"Look, Grandma Martha," I said proudly. I pointed to the black-and-white television that was the monitor, where, after nearly two days of programming, I'd managed to manipulate a tiny white dot back and forth across the screen, like a game of "pong" only without the game.

"This is a computer," I lectured her. "In the years to come, it will change everything. It's the most significant technological advance in the history of mankind."

Grandma Martha gave me what could only be described as a condescending smile. She clearly could not grasp how vital it was to the future of our world that this white dot was drifting around on her TV. "That's nice," she told me.

Later that evening, I was back at the keyboard, convinced I was near some sort of breakthrough that would save our species, like maybe I'd get the tiny dot to blink. I was still a little miffed that Grandma Martha hadn't fallen to her knees and praised me for introducing her to the most amazing invention since ... since ...

And then it occurred to me: Born in the 1880s, Grandma Martha had seen the invention of the telephone and the airplane. She could remember a time before her home had electricity and indoor plumbing. Did I really think she was going to be impressed with what looked like a clunky typewriter with no place to put the paper? Did I really think that at her age I was demonstrating something that would have more impact on her life than the pop-up toaster, or the bra?

My "monitor," the TV, was invented when she was older than I had been at that point, and it wasn't until 1933 that America saw the drive-in movie theater (where, according to family legend, I myself was invented). In the months to come, was Grandma Martha more likely to use a computer than a vacuum cleaner (1899), air conditioner (1902) or a zipper (1893)?

I might as well have tried to impress Grandma Martha by playing the piano. At least I could DO something with that keyboard.

To write Bruce Cameron, visit his Website at www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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