ABCs of Feisty Parents

I chuckle to myself every time I hear parents bragging about what number their child can count to, or how many letters of the alphabet their kid can recite. I see one parent getting jealous of the other and wondering what they are doing wrong because their kid can only count to ten and the other child can count to fourteen! How silly of a thing to fret over.
 Not that there is anything wrong with number and colors, but really, why bother the stress over letters and shapes when a kid is going to learn that in kindergarden with no effort on your part anyways?

I love her to death...but sometimes, she is just TOO silly

Some kids really love that kind of thing. Emma is obsessed with letter and numbers. She wants to count EVERYTHING! She asks me what every letter is on my shirt... several times a day and we have read the Dr Seuss ABC book about 100 times. Does that mean she is better than a kid who is interested in dinosaurs? NO!
In fact, I think Emma's obsession is a bit strange. I'm not going to discourage her of course. Whatever floats her boat and is not sex related in fine by me! But I HAVE stopped answering other parents when they ask me how high she can count or if she knows her ABC's. Because, its just not worth it.
I can either lie, to make them feel like their kid is a genius (and they can tell me ALL about what I'm doing wrong and how smart their kid is), or I can tell them the truth and leave them feeling like their child isn't up to par somehow. Either way, it's just no good.

I wonder why parents want to compare their kids so much anyways?