My Daughter the Aspiring Lawyer?

A lot of parents look for genius traits in their offspring, myself included. My 7-year old is intelligent, but probably not a genius (darn), unless she's one of those rare highly functional geniuses who have perfectly normal childhoods but still love to watch the Powerpuff Girls ad nauseum.

I mean, she reads at a higher level than her peers, yet seems to struggle with math for the time being. I was the same way at her age, except that I couldn't read nearly as well, so I'm not too worried about her subtraction skills as she enters the Second Grade.

But, it's questions like what she asked the other day that gives me some insight that she'll probably end up smarter than me, so I'd better watch out:

So, we were watching television, because that's what we do. On the screen came a commercial for CLR (the Calcium/Lime Remover product, not to be confused with Microsoft advertising the Common Language Runtime on television). They showed a "real time" side-by-side comparison of their product competing against Lime Away's product, and of course, CLR removed the calcium deposits faster than the competition.

My daughter then asks, "Does CLR have to ask the owner of Lime Away before they can show their product on a commercial?"

I was floored! I don't think I ever considered the ramifications of such an issue until I was at least in high school, and here she is coming up with that on her own.

That makes me feel a little better about my retirement plans if she turns out to be an intellectual property lawyer. ;-)