What did you do this summer? Take a trip to the beach? Go camping?
Nathan Bond probably has you beat.
The 10-year-old from Fresno, California, did a few of those things, plus he found time to memorize the entire US Constitution.
And he recited it in a video his mom, Heidi Bond, posted over the weekend to CNN iReport.
Nathan stands in his living room — clad in suit and tie, an American flag in the background — and passionately recites every word in a 25-minute video. It took him 137 days to memorize the whole thing.
He put in several hours a day
“It was pretty hard,” Nathan told CNN. “I didn’t get one break except on my birthday. The first article (of the Constitution) is really hard.”
Nathan, who is home schooled, had been studying the Declaration of Independence (he memorized that too) and really “fell in love with America and the government,” his mom said. So he challenged himself to memorize the Constitution.
He started back in April, and he worked up to four hours a day with his mom, who would break the Constitution into 40-word segments that he could remember.
“He has a mind like no other I’ve ever seen,” Heidi Bond, told CNN. “He’s a genius. He can memorize anything within seconds.”
He’s also recorded a video of him recalling the periodic table from memory.
He even worked on his memorization project during the family’s summer outings. Camping trips, hiking excursions and boating rides — wherever he was, he worked on the project.
“Our philosophy is work hard, play hard,” his mom said.
He wants to be commander in chief
Nathan wants to be president some day, so of course he’s partial to Article 2, Section 1: the presidential oath of office.
Until then, he’d just be happy to recite the Constitution in D.C. on Constitution Day — September 16 — perhaps to even President Obama himself at the White House.
