My siblings & I are reasonably smart people. We are fortunate enough to have intelligent genes on both sides of our family; in fact, on my mum's side of the family, I think we're the dumb ones. My dad's side of the family has plenty of brains, too, but there are some who have left the tools in the box for so long that it may have rusted shut.
Anyway, we have some game. Unfortunately, we are the stereotypical smart people who have as much absentmindedness as we have brain cells, and are more or less useless when it comes to areas outside our personal expertise.
Me: I can't add. You know what else you can't do when you can't add? Subtract, multiply or divide. Or any complicated mathematics. I'm also excluded from such areas as science, engineering, computer programming, graphic design; in other words, pretty much every marketable skill comes down to being able to add.
Billy: Rarely forms a coherent sentence. I don't know that he can't, but he certainly doesn't, most of the time. Basically, he and I have opposite skill sets. I've often wished that we had been twins, so I could have done his language-related homework while he did my math & science. The authorities might have frowned upon that, but still...
Denise: Is the last one to get any joke. Ever. Standup comics should have to practise on Denise; they'd work really hard to be funny, because she wouldn't laugh to begin with, and they'd end up thinking they were funnier than they really are, because she would laugh really hard when she finally got it. (Also, this pic makes it look like Denise is shorter than me. Rest assured, that is not the case; we were standing on an incline.)
So I say all this, not so my siblings will send me hate mail, but to set up for this conversation that my reasonably smart self had with my genius sister:
Me: (having just explained why I have 17 textbooks for one semester) Bigwords.com is an amazing thing.
Denise: What is it?
Me: Big. Words. Dot com. As in, words that are large.
Denise: Does it really have big words?
Me: Not that I have noticed. But I do use a lot of big words, so it may have just looked normal to me; you'll have to look for yourself.
Denise: No...
Me: (I'm an interrupter) And actually, you use big words, too! Get somebody dumb to look at it and tell you if they use big words.
Denise: No, no! I mean, are their words big? Like, size 72??
Me: Oh, right! No, I don't think so, except for the title at the top.
Denise: (having arrived on the page) No, they aren't. Well, isn't that a bummer.
Yep. Big words, "size 72", inability to communicate: We are regular Einsteins, all right.
2 comments:
Susan, that made me giggle for so many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I can totally see myself doing that very thing.
We miss seeing your smiling face!
Ginger
:) Glad you liked it.
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