My dad wrote the numbers 1 through 4 on a piece of paper, then asked me to pick one, but not tell him which I'd chosen. Once I had it, he said, "You picked 3, didn't you?" I was dumbfounded. "How did you do that??"
"Most people don't like to be out on the edges. It makes them uncomfortable. So they don't pick 1 or 4. And most people, like you, are right-handed, so they pick 3 over 2."
"OK, OK, do it again." (This was the moment a flash of magic happened in my head.)
"You picked 1 this time, didn't you?"
"No, I picked 3 again because I knew you would think I would pick 1 this time."
With a fear in his eyes that I only later discovered came from the fact that his own sense of safety depended on being the smartest person in the room, he said, "You're only 3. I don't think you're supposed to know how to do that yet."
But here's the other thing--I was literate when I was 3. Nobody really knows how I picked it up, but one day I told my mom it was my turn to read the stories, and I've been reading fluently ever since. I've been told I read differently than most people even now (blocks of text rather than individual letters or words), but I was definitely reading.
I've never associated the two events before, nor that maybe I was only able to do one because of the other, but it makes sense of the fact that other kids didn't really start to seem reasonable or thoughtful until 1st or 2nd grade. They lived in these imaginary worlds where things didn't have to make sense. It seemed like a lot of fun, but I had trouble joining them there. I always assumed both skills just correlated with age, not that one might facilitate the other.
My story obviously doesn't prove anything, but you've given me an interesting thing to think about today!