Way back when, a few million years ago or so, back when I was a tad pole, back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth (or so Kaitlyn thinks), I believed that I was actually sort of smart. Not brilliant, just smart. Smart ass was more like it. Quick witted, fast, with a brilliant come back. Stuff like that. I also had a vocabulary far, far above a normal pubescent child. That wasn't because I was smart, that was because I was well read. To be able to read Time or National Geographic, one had to use a dictionary and actually know how to look words up that one did not understand the meaning of. Hence the college level vocabulary at 12.

I used to think that nearly everyone else on earth was an idiot and I was just far superior to them intellectually. Forty-one years have passed since the time I first formulated that idea in my little pea brain. Since that time I have met many a soul with intellects far superior to my own. I must admit that I am generally drawn to those people, I get almost giddy around highly intelligent people. I become enamored with them. Maybe it's because it's such a rarity in my world to actually meet someone with an IQ over 100. I am like a starving dog when I find that one juicy bone amongst the rot of the compost pile.

I have learned that I am not all that smart. In fact, I am only slightly above average. Those of you with genius IQs will note that while perusing my blog. My blog, like myself, never quite reaches brilliance, just slightly above average. I am ok with that. It's just me and I have learned to like me just ok, just as I am, just slightly above average and all.

Living in the Ozarks, you run into a lot of people who, had they been raised elsewhere and been prodded to actually get a real education, might have been considered brilliant. You can tell that despite their lack of a formal education, they still are able to figure out complex mechanical or mathematical issues that dumbfound me. I generally can tell when someone has a higher than average intelligence despite their lack of a formal education. It's taken living here for 15 years to figure that one out though. Well, actually, I started figuring that out shortly after I moved here, but my ability to spot brilliance despite someone not being urbanely erudite has evolved down to a science over the years.

What I have learned over the years here is to not judge a book by it's cover. You would think that coming from a large metropolitan area such as Los Angeles that I would have learned long ago not to judge people just because of their vocabulary or the way they dressed. Not so, double negatives actually still tend to throw me off a bit when conversing with someone. I have to take the long view and remember that they are from here where double negatives are still part of the cultural nomenclature.  

Because someone choses to use the colloquialism "Fixing to go to", does not make them less than brilliant. It makes them a product of their environment. Since I have met many a person that I have learned are quite brilliant in their own special ways who use such regional slang, I have learned that what comes out of someone's mouth does not necessarily mean they are not smart. I have found that each individual must be studied as it's own unique entity in order to make a judgment of their intellectual capacity.  Gone are my days of taking one short listen to a conversation coming out of someone's mouth and placing a value judgment on their brilliance or lack there of.

Uncle Bill is a prime example of someone who is brilliant, yet appears ignorant on first glance because of the regional vocabulary he uses in conversation. He is also old enough to have a serious regional accent. Bill is a little over 60 now and was born and raised in Springdale. Not many people born around "these them there parts" in the last 30 years have a regional accent. Television, improving roadways and mass migrations from urban areas have changed the regional accent in the young of the Ozarks. That nasal tone is almost all but lost to anyone under 35. In fact, when you meet someone under 35 around here with an accent, you are pretty sure that they were not born and raised here. With the exception of some backwoods folk who's parents kept them cloistered from the real world. But then you are talking people who truly did live way the fuck out in the middle of absolutely no where, high up in the hills in some far away holler, their nearest neighbor being 10 miles away. A lot of the Amish and Mennonite around here still have serious accents. Are you getting the picture now?

Anyway, Bill is brilliant. Inways that I sincerely envy. I think Bill has the equivalent of an AA from whatever regional junior college was available to him at the time he was being educated. Basically he took whatever courses he had to take in order to get ahead in his career at the time. I can relate to that, I did that too in my youth. Bill was brilliant in mathematics. So he became an accountant. He calls it a book keeper since he does not have a BA, but he did the work of an accountant for many, many years.

How you know that Uncle Bill is a genius is not his vocabulary, nor his brilliance in math, but rather it's his ability to take one look at a complex mechanical problem and solve it almost instantly. In fact, it almost infuriated me with how fast he could figure things of that nature out so quickly. I would be knocking my brains out trying to figure out how something functioned (that happens a lot in my line of work btw) and he would walk over, take one momentary look at it and have it functional or apart or whatever in moments. Sure as hell made me feel like a moron on more than one occasion.

Uncle Bill, whether he knows it or not, has taught me much about intelligence over the years. In his quiet, unassuming way, he taught much more than I have ever taught him. Uncle Bill was my best man at my ill fated wedding. Well, the wedding wasn't ill fated, just the relationship. That's what I get for thinking I needed to make an honest woman out of someone. But I digress, Bill was and is in fact, one of my dearest friends. I love him beyond words.

At any rate, my young child, Kaitlyn by name, who shall turn 9 in a few days just came down stairs to announce to me that she can't sleep. I made her some warm milk and gave her a quick relaxation technique that I am sure she will not use and sent her back up to bed.

Her mother claims that our child wants to learn what I have to teach her about things pertaining to spirituality. I guess after almost 9 years of her not listening to a thing I say, I find it hard to believe that she would be able to learn anything from me since she seldom listens to anything coming out of my mouth.

She just came back down again to tell me that she did the relaxation thing I just taught her and that she got all the way to her feet, fell asleep for a few minutes andthen woke right back up again. I didn't correct her by telling her that she might have been upstairs for all of 3 minutes before she came back down. I am sure some people would think this is cute. I don't think it's cute. I think it's brilliant thinking to buy a few more minutes of not being in bed where you are supposed to be. But then I would never say that either because for some reason, that sort of thing goes right over her head.

See how much fun parenting is. Makes you want to be one doesn't it? I never wanted to be a parent when I was a child, just as an FYI here. Never had day dreams of being anyone's parental unit of any sort. Never played with dolls, never played house, never fantasized any of those sick things that children who wanted to be parents did when they were kids. I dreamed of building communities, building homes that were functional for people. Building communities where people lived together in harmony. Normal every day childhood dreams.

Ok, it's bed time. Wish me luck on my own bed time meditation.

Ciao