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I'm smart.  I'm probably smarter than you.  I don't say this to place myself on some sort of grand pedestal from which I can look down upon the intellectually inferior.  (Even saying intellectually inferior sounds silly to me)  I just see it as a statement of fact.  I'm smart.  Willie Mays was fast.  Arnold Schwarzenegger is strong.  This guy is ugly: http://biboz.net/feos/ugly_....  It doesn't make me feel better or worse than anyone else.  It just means I can comprehend things a little faster than the next person.  It gives me an advantage perhaps, but not one that's particularly significant in the long run (believe it or not).  Experience and motivation are what allow you to do things.  Intelligence just lessens the amount of experience you need to be competent at doing things.

The problem is I'm smart, but I'm not really, Really smart.  I'm no genius.  My IQ measures around 140.  Well above average, yes.  But still considerably below true genius level.  It leaves me in a nasty little grey area.  I understand things easier than most people, so I don't feel much connection to them.  I'm already thinking about how to fix things while most people are still busy trying to understand what happened.  However I'm not smart enough to fix the really important problems like global warming, world hunger, or how to get soap operas off the air.  Add to that a lack of motivation and you get me.  I can solve all kinds of little problems, but the big ones escape me.  And in the meantime I have trouble meeting people who don't annoy me.

What's even more fun is that because I'm not in charge (I'm neither ambitious nor motivated) I have to wait for others to understand before I can fix even the little problems.  I've probably spent 40% of my waking life trying to explain things to others.  Often just so I can get permission to fix it.  It's ridiculously aggravating.  Especially when they argue with me (the silly little twerps).  *sigh*

It's not much fun.  Live with that for a few decades and you begin come to the conclusion that all you're good for is telling computer illiterate people they need to turn the computer on before they use it.  "Do you see a little light on the front of the computer?  No, I mean on the computer, not the monitor.  Yes, there's a difference between a computer and a monitor."

I often wonder what it would have been like had I been born dumb.  Would life be easier if the toughest part of my day was figuring out how to tie my shoes?  Would I be less angry at the world if I hadn't had to constantly deal with those who couldn't understand me?  Would I have been more likely to be a part of the crowd had I not been too intelligent to understand the crowd is wrong?  Would I have felt less responsibility to try and fix everything (and less guilty when I failed) had I been less capable of doing so?  Will Tom Cruise ever admit he's gay?  Who knows.  Too much speculation on what could have been is usually more harmful than good.

Still, it would have been nice to be able to play with all the other cruel, hateful, prejudice, cowardly, malcontent, vengeful, greedy, blind, selfish, self-centered, self-righteous, self-important, excessively dramatic, incompetent fools of the world.  Would have made lunch a little less boring.

It's not easy being smart.