See, my three year old isn't super advanced, but he isn't too far off from being able to speak similarly to how Zeb does throughout most of the tale, though not at the end. My four year old nephew on the other has better speech, coherency, and memory than Zeb does here. You can't make blanket statements about kids based on anecdotal evidence. To me, "4 year olds don't talk that much" is a bit of a silly thing to say, but I understand your experience may differ.
Beyond that, I accept the criticisms on the bad driving bits. I may have gone overboard, but made the choice to keep it like that, and I can live with it. And I'm sorry if you're not a fan of 2483. I know the concept of that article isn't particularly interesting at its core, but it's a main character of the tale series, so there is going to be more of it. However, I will definitely be featuring the other playground skips later in the series.
Thank you for taking time to read it and for the feedback.