And so I came to be in possession of James Joyce's "Dubliners" and Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice" both of which have lead me to ask the same question I always ask when duped into buying and reading "classics". How did this come to be defined as a "classic"? Who decides these things? Because they really ought to be fired. I am admittedly not very far into either of them but it's the sort of reading that I will do only because I have time right now and, I suppose, because it will be good for me, in the way that eating fibre and playing team sports are good for one. I'll do it but I doubt I'll enjoy it. I'm consoling myself that neither can be worse than "A Farewell to Arms" which was, in my opinion, the literary equivalent of eating hay bales while simultaneously playing outfield on a boggy baseball diamond with a cigar smoking monkey flagellating you between pitches. No, wait, the monkey makes that scenario far too interesting; a cigar smoking dentist performing a root canal on you between plays. Growing a beard for three chapters indeed.
The fact that I fall for this 'but it's a "classic"' schtick everytime does nothing to improve my opinion of my own intellect and the fact that I only scored 110 on the test in the "Boost Your IQ" book I bought at the sale, isn't helping either. Admittedly, you probably shouldn't try to test your IQ after half a bottle of wine but I've been holed up due to injuries and rain so I thought it might alleviate the boredom. I suppose it has, in an unexpected way. It's hard to be bored when you're neurotically developing a complex.
My great big brain after all has been my excuse for pretty much everything, good or bad, in my life. I had teachers who told me the reason I was always getting into trouble was boredom. I was, essentially, too bright for their classes. In fact my high school principal once told me my IQ and aptitude tests indicated I was "in the wrong stream" so why was I only performing at mediocre levels? This is when I began to think there might be something to all of this IQ business. Hadn't he just answered his own question? Who, when given the option, would choose to take University entrance level courses and actually have to work for respectable grades, when you could take the "there will never be enough money for education beyond public school for me" courses, skip your classes, never open a book and still get a respectable B average just for showing up on test days? Not a genius that's for sure. But I soon had to admit I am not a genius merely lazy, though I do give myself some credit for using my smarts efficiently to achieve optimum laziness. (And I did still get into University, albeit a few years later than my harder working peers, possibly proving in the long run that I did have genius potential.)
I've also believed for years that the reason I've failed to have successful relationships is because I am too smart. Statistics aside (I think, statistically, smart women are 70% less likely to get married than their dumber counterparts. I guess it's just that much harder to trick a smart girl into doing it. Bodes well for evolution doesn't it?), there was the lawyer who didn't date women who were smarter than him (but would I bed him anyway?), the jocks who told me to quit using big words and "heh, you sound like you talk from a movie", the potheads who found me too deep and the philosopher prof who found me too intimidating 'in a Bukowski kind of way".
The Ex and I had an ongoing joke about who was smarter than whom until one day, to take the joke to it's penultimate conclusion, we went online and took IQ tests. We were within points of each other, I would have barely made it into MENSA but he barely missed, so of course I didn't apply. (I kid- who would want to join a club only to be the dumbest person in the room?) After we split he told me he would never again date a woman who was smarter than him. This, in hindsight, was the joke's ultimate conclusion.
It's gotten to the point that, when I do meet a man I find attractive and interesting, I'm afraid to speak and the exchange inevitably goes something like:
Scott the Cute X-ray technician: Were you waiting long?
Me: I got here around 2.
(Clock now reads 5:15)
SCXT: That's not too bad.
Me: Please, this is North America, most marriages don't even last that long so no, it wasn't long but I'm a product of my culture and to me it felt interminable.
Voices in my head: shut up, shut up, shut up!
He laughs but all conversation ends until we're in the X-ray room and he has to determine if I'm pregnant by asking a series of intimate questions about my cycle. When he bends over to arrange my foot on the X-Ray film I can see that he's blushing madly and I'm very glad I didn't say, "Look, I haven't had sex in two years, if I'm pregnant we need to call the Vatican" out loud like I had been thinking.
When all the pictures have been taken, he goes back behind the partition, rustles some papers and says, "So, are you just in town for the weekend?"
But, for some reason that I am still, three days later, trying to decipher and that, on the surface at the time, just felt very much like not wanting to say anything awkward, or wrong or intimidating I said, "Yes."
That's it. Yes. Not, "Well, I've actually moved here for the summer unless this foot's broken of course" or "No, I'm here for the summer, any suggestions on must sees?" but rather an outright lie that also stopped any further communication dead until he had wheeled me back to the room for broken bones. There he put the brakes on my wheelchair and crouched down beside me to look me dead in the eyes and said, "All right, well, you take care now." And then, after pausing maybe a bit too long before turning the wrong way out the door, I caught him looking in the room to see if I was looking when he walked by again.
Honestly, until that moment, it hadn't even dawned on me that he might not have just been making small talk. He was, after all, handsome and kind, and I was, after all smelly and dressed like a back alley bag lady. Big brain indeed. What good has it ever done me? And now it turns out it doesn't even exist. It's a myth. Like the lochness monster or the Yeti. Which may be why it's never served me well, but then were all those men just being ironic and I'm so daft it did a 747? Even the jocks? How embarrassing.
I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter. It all is what it is but in this entirely un-Zen moment all it is is giving me a complex. And heartburn. But then, a complex, when you're locked up with cabin fever, is probably a blessing, some form of entertainment. Something for a brain, intelligent or not, to mull over other than, "who's been feeding the campground bunnies coffee?"
Seriously, they've been madly off in all directions all day long. Even the sumo sized groundhog seems a bit concerned.
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