GIRL TALK: Fetch me my tall-poppy scythe

CHILD prodigies confuse me. I just don't know how to deal with them. Part of me wants to slap them on the back and congratulate them for being so smart, but an equal yet darker part wants to flick them on the ear (hard) and maybe kill off a few excess brain cells in the process.
Yes, I'm jealous. Not content with being a nerdy school kid who got good marks but had to work for them, I want to cut down the tall poppies to ... well ... approximately my height.
Last week in my capacity as host on regional television show Chatroom, I got to meet my nemesis: a professional wedding photographer with tons of talent.
 I didn't have a problem with that. The description could happily be applied to a number of colleagues I also call friends.
What I did object to was this: he was 15.
And not an awkward, monosyllabic, gangly 15 whose grunts, teenage acne and facial fluff would make him seem more closely related to our Neanderthal ancestors than a modern adult male, but an articulate, running-a-business-after-the-homework-is-done 15-year-old who frankly makes me seem like a chronic underachiever by comparison.
Jayson Kingsbeer is everything I wasn't at 15 years old.
While I was shut away from the light listening to wrist-slashing music and taking teenage angst to new and dizzy heights at 15, this young pup is in the same professional field that I now am at twice his age.
As I sat in the studio asking him about his motivations I felt absurd and utterly conflicting emotions; a sense of motherly pride that a young person was giving it a good go in a field that I knew from personal experience was tough, and a jealous envy that he was clearly so gifted not just with a camera but with the business and people skills so vital to success in the field.
For half an hour while the cameras and conversation rolled on, the little devil on my left shoulder whispered nasty little comments about how he still had a lot to learn ... a long way to go ... while the angel on my right delighted in the sight of a young man in the making, breaking all the moulds for the normal expectations we have of young people.
Thankfully, as the interview came to a close, the angel had put the better case. Sure, I wasn't as successful at 15 as he was, but I was successful nonetheless and child prodigies, while undoubtedly annoying in their way, need all the encouragement they can get in a world where standing out among the crowd is uncool at any age, but especially 15.
After I showed him around my studio and traded tips on exposures and apertures, I realised that instead of being different from me, Jayson and I really had a lot in common.
Inside us all, at any age, is a child prodigy just waiting to get out, to shine, to wow. Despite our protestations that it wasn't cool, we all wanted to win the science fair and in the adult world we are still wanting to win its grown-up equivalent, whatever that may be.
Jayson and I are now firm friends ... on Facebook. I'm a little bit scared of joining him on Twitter, but I expect he will be infinitely patient and teach me everything about it I need to know.