“I’m, like, a smart person”…

Or so I was always told when I was young and finishing up my 1st grde grade (good catch, Sam) arithmetic problems well before the allotted time was up, meaning I sat quietly in my seat, bored to tears. Or reading at an I dunno what grade level but well above 2nd in second grade. And getting perfect 99s on my Iowa tests in 3rd grade. My teacher, bless her heart, didn’t handle that all that well. She was announcing the results of the test and called me out, looking at me with big buggly eyes. What? What? I thought. Did I fail the test? I was terrified. I did *not* want to fail! The truth ended up being almost kind of worse. Perfect 99s? That lead to the [fortunately occasional] nickname of “Brain of Lincoln School”.

Can I just say that the kind of attention those test scores got me shoved me into Cheating to Get Low Grades until I was about a junior in high school. Fortunately, I recovered and as a seasoned adult, I know that I am probably “smarter” than a lot of people but there are a whole heckuva lotta folks who are smarter than me. Not to mention that we are all “smart” about different things. That is a good thing and we are all important in our world and society! I couldn’t see that back at Lincoln School. In those days, you were “smart” or you were “dumb” or you were a “talker” (“smart” or “dumb” kids could be “talkers”). I wanted to be “smart”. I wanted to be a “talker” but I was scared to death of the punishment. I didn’t want to be “dumb” but a lot of the “dumb” kids seemed to be having the most fun, at least the ones who were “talkers”. I couldn’t sort it out.

What the heck made me think of this tonight? One of my mantras in this particular polly-tickle season is to quote our president when he says a version of, well, see the title. One of my other mantras is, “I didn’t vote for him.” [Say it in a sing-song kinda way if you can imagine that.] I’m not sure there’s any way to compare me and Mr. Trump. I suspect he is more intelligent than a lot of people but I do not think he is an appropriate leader for our country. For the record, I also didn’t vote for the Great Lake State’s current governor, who I *definitely* consider to be intelligent but *not* a good governor (google “Flint water” or something like that). I do not hate Rick Snyder. I just don’t think he knew what the heck he was taking on.

BTW, isn’t that cat beautiful? She is Simcoe, a tortoiseshell kitty. I am pretty sure she doesn’t care doodly-squat about whine. If I get it right, she is more interested in pizza. Her owner is a young relative of mine. My relative is a phd student in a field that most of us do not want anything to do with. I won’t go any further with that tonight as it is her story. I do not think she has a whole lot of time to sit around and drink whine but I sent her these socks and Simcoe seems to approve. Even though she’d probably rather cadge some pizza.

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