Hold On

S: I'll put my shirt down. I'm sorry I disgust you.

M: Thanks.

S: What?

M: Nothing.

The oddest sorts of things often send me into tailspins. Unfortunately I don't mean that circa 1990's television with a stupid but friendly fearless pilot, who was also a bear. And you know what? I hated Kit Cloudkicker. I know that I was supposed to identify with him because he was a young person who enjoyed x-game like sports and perhaps wore his hat backwards, but he was also a whiny b. And even at ten I didn't like that. Nor did I care for slow-witted Baloo or that tight wad Rebecca Cunningham. I pretty much disliked every character on that show and watched it after school every day for about three years straight. I don't know what this says about human nature, but it's probably not a good thing.


Anyhow, the oddest sorts of things sort of depress me. Today it was "The Harpsichord and the Clavichord an encyclopedia." I've got nothing against either the Harpsichord or the Clavichord, which to my knowledge is not a real instrument but something needed to go on the cover next to the Harpischord because who the hell would purchase a three volume set of encyclopedias about the Harpsichord alone? The point is, that the encyclopedia, and probably the surrounding thousands of books about a million different things that I know nothing about made me feel a bit inadequate. And it is at this point that I start having fantasies about reading a book a day and learning what Heidegger meant exactly, and hell, maybe whittling. If only I was smarter.

Which then immediately brought me to a comment made recently by a friend. I was reflecting on the fact that only children are often more gifted scholars because of the prolonged (hopefully) engagement of the parents with the child on an adult level. I made a comment of something to the effect that we should have an only so they could be smart. Her answer was, "I don't really care if my kid is a genius or not."

And, of course this is all in the matter of about a minute, the mind moves rather quickly, I started to reflect on the fact that intelligence does very little to make people happy. It's a bit of a dead end. Perhaps I should want my child to not be intelligent first, but to be a good citizen, a contributing member of society, someone who could whittle and woodwork and talk offhand about constellations and strata of clouds and maybe help some other Boy Scouts earn merit badges. Unless the kids didn't deserve them, in which case I'd want my honest citizen to rat them out. Or would I? Wouldn't I want my child to know when to speak up and when to shut up and make friends. Isn't that a part of growing up as well?

On my way back into the office I pass a table where two girls have been talking about math for the past four hours. One of them says something about price change, and I think to myself how happy I am when I'm engaged in something, and what a tragedy it is that I'm so horrible at math. Perhaps that is a career in which intelligence and happiness can be wedded, mathematicians are so buttoned down. But then I remembered that movie they made about John Nash that was based on the book that was based on him going crazy, and I lamented that even in math I couldn't have found a safe place.

And really, (again this is in about a minute's time) I remembered back to the night before when S and I sat on the couch watching Jeopardy. Alex Trebec (that needlessly smug bastard) was asking questions about books. And one of the questions was about the book about a mathematician gone mad, and I yelled out, "Prime, it's Prime," an oddly boring movie staring Gwyneth Paltrow. And when the contestant got the question right, and then the next three, all of which were about memoirs written in the last fifteen years I just kept saying over and over to the television as if it would listen, "Those aren't even books. Those aren't even books. Where is Tolstoy?" As if Alex would listen to me closely, and for once hear the correct answer, "That brings you to negative 6,000 and you now have control of the board."
M: I'll take calculus for 500.

I remember taping this video off VH1 when I was fourteen. It was important.

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