Our son recently had his sixth birthday. We gave him a road atlas.

Before you condemn us as poor gift-givers or parents who can’t relate to our kids, dig this – it was his favorite gift. He really wanted a new one, as his old copy was falling apart.

This was the day before Father’s Day, so after giving my child an atlas, I got Diddy Kong Racing. It plays on my Nintendo DS, which he gave me last Father’s Day – two days after receiving a calculator for his birthday. Freaky Friday, anyone?

The birthday boy – let’s call him “Doodlebug” – loved the atlas. A deluxe edition, it’s vastly superior to the old one.

“Words fail!” he exclaimed after unwrapping it. We think that means Doodlebug is pleased.

The deluxe version is spiral-bound with heavy pages, coated for easy cleaning. (You never know when a childish person might play with your atlas and get it dirty.) Doodlebug appreciates the added protection against the possibly dirty hands of his irresponsible two-year-old brother, Sugarbear.

Of course, the new atlas retains all the features he liked in the old one – mileage tables, alphanumeric grids, and population listings. Plus, it includes Canada and Mexico, a must for any would-be traveler of North America.

Not that Doodlebug is a big traveler; he’s been in only ten percent of the United States. He has grandparents in Virginia, so we go there occasionally. He has grandrodents in Disney World, so we go there frequently. Those drives account for four additional states; toss in his native stomping grounds and he’s been in five. He’s obsessed with the other 45 (also D.C. and Puerto Rico).

Doodlebug was disappointed about one thing – we didn’t think to give him a ruler, for computing distances between cities. He’s tired of borrowing mine, which with mere eighth-inch increments doesn’t yield nearly the level of precision he requires.

He feels compelled to track nationwide distances, so he painstakingly records them in tables. Color-coded for metric and standard. In Microsoft Excel. I’m not lying.

We were grocery shopping a week before his birthday and I asked him if he wanted to stop and order a cake on the way home. “No thanks,” replied Doodlebug, “I have to get home soon; I have some work to do.”

“What work? You’re five!”

“Daddy! I haven’t finished my spreadsheet of distances from Raleigh to major cities in Montana!”

“And this is for…?”

“When we go there one day.”

“Why would we go to Montana, Doodlebug?”

“Because we’ve never been!”

“We’ve never been to Siberia, either, but that doesn’t mean we should go.”

“Don’t be silly, Daddy – we can’t drive to Siberia.”

“I’m not even sure we can drive to Montana – I wouldn’t know how to get there.”

“That’s easy – go from North Carolina through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, South Dakota, and you’re there!”

My jaw dropped as I ran the cart into a Mrs. Paul’s display. After regaining some composure and the use of my shins, I checked his hands for crib notes. None – he was mapping from memory. I quizzed him on a longer trip; he nailed it. I gave him a coast-to-coaster; no problem. I invented a state; he wasn’t fooled.

For one sick moment, I felt guilty – like Charlie Babbitt quizzing Rainman on which cards were left in the blackjack decks, secretly scheming to turn a profit from abnormalities of his own flesh and blood. Fortunately, that moment passed.

We sped home so Doodlebug could finish his spreadsheet. Lately, he’s been working on a new task on his PC; he’s been Googling kids’ game shows whose top prizes could pay off two mortgages, an SUV and three credit cards, with enough change to afford a Montanan vacation.

I’d research it myself, but his computer’s better. Plus, I’ve been busy racing Diddy Kong.

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