When you were 7, you probably were "above average" at a few things. Personally, I was always an above-average eater. But whatever it was, you probably couldn't make any money off your skills. So it's really envy-enducing when kids like Kieron Williamson, the 7-year-old Reuters profiles above, can sell his paintings for thousands of dollars. Apparently, he's the next Monet.
Of course, calling a 7-year-old the next Monet is like projecting that I would win the 2012 Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest after I ate an entire family-sized can of SpaghettiOs at age 4. (That's a true story, by the way.) If history is a lesson, little Kieron's story will end poorly -- see "My Kid Could Paint That" for a similar case. But like Malcolm Gladwell explained in The New Yorker a while back, humans do love them some prodigies, and Williamson does seem to be a pretty precocious painter. (Alliteration!) My advice? Take the money and run, Kieron. Sure, your artistic peers might catch up to you eventually, but at least you'll be able to live in an apartment in your twenties, and not in an artist's colony in Williamsburg.
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