Speaking of children speaking...

My boys. Even the power and beauty of the ocean cannot stop their talking.

I'm working on a theory derived via a major difference between my sons, one who is six years old and the other two.

Hey, if it was good enough for Piaget, it's good enough for me.

Here goes. Both of my boys are enamored with words...their own to be exact. From the time they wake up to the time they can no longer move their lips, this place is non-stop talking.

Non. Stop.

I am told (all the time) that this was how I was as a child. In fact, my siblings argue that I talked more than my boys combined. But they're older than me and prone to faulty memory, so I don't believe them.

Anyway, here's my theory: words are currency. More than money. More than precious metal. "More than even Legos!" as my older chatter box says.

What's interesting to me is how these two purveyors of mouth noise spend their words in completely opposite ways. (This way of looking at how one opens his or her word wallet has invaded my daily interactions. If you're talking to me, it's a safe bet I'm working like an accountant with your vocal ledger.)

Anyway, my older boy is an introvert with the sensitive clown gene. Precocious with his vocabulary, he likes to know and explain things to EVERYONE. This kid would give a go at explaining multiverse theory to Stephen Hawking, convinced the guy really just needs to see it from his perspective for it all to make sense.

But put him in the store and have the woman at the register ask him which superhero is on his shirt? Nothing.

Then there's the younger kid that keeps hanging around my house. At two, he's the guy at the party with everyone gathered around him, talking about the time he and Channing Tatum came up with the parody of Jean Claude Van Damme's Volvo commercial. He's the extrovert's extrovert with the performer's need to speak and act in such a way that you can't help but react to him.

He doesn't care whether you understand him or not, just that you love him and laugh at the appropriate times.

When I think about it, here's what my two pocket orators are teaching me: the value of words for both of them is in the forms of control they wield over what they are saying. In this is control; in this is the power to shape and direct meaning, and both of my boys understand this in very natural, unschooled ways.

In one, words manifest as a shield built of explanations and the ability to engage only those people he feels comfortable with. For the other, the same verbal skill set is a microphone and a stage that provide an audience for the things going on in his head. In essence, the way my boys speak is a better character inventory than any Myers-Briggs inventory I've ever seen.

In fact, that might be true for all of us when we think we're "just" talking.