What Do I Know?
I’ve figured out the problem with the world. As always, the problem starts with me.
I grew up believing I was smart. My parents – both college-educated, intelligent people – told me I was smart. I took some kind of test in elementary school that verified it. I got better grades than many of my classmates, and I graduated from college. So I believed I was a pretty smart cookie.
Then I met Bill. I’d met other people who, I knew, were smarter than me – lots of them. But I didn’t marry those people.
Getting to know Bill put my intelligence into perspective. Bill sees things differently than I do; he has a broader scope. He can figure things out that completely baffle me. He intuitively knows things that most people will just never understand.
And he is the most humble person I’ve ever met.
Lest I think that Bill is simply “differently abled,” Bill is also knowledgable in every single field, which makes him a trivia whiz. He knows science, geography, math, outer space, history, and government. He can fix a car or a computer, or anything in between. Before Google existed, if I really wanted to know something, Bill was the first place I’d turn.
Bill even explains his answers to questions, although I prefer less detailed responses because really, it’s a bit confusing for me.
Over the years, I determined that Bill is just plain smarter than me. And that’s okay, especially since he gave those good-brain genes to our kids.
I reason that my intelligence must be of some worth, since he decided to marry me. I try not to think too hard about this, since this may not have been his best decision.
Still, he stuck with me, so I must be smart enough for him. We have friends who are absolutely brilliant as well, and they put up with me. That has to count for something – but who knows?
A woman once told me a story about her first grandchild.
“She cut her finger and it was bleeding. You know what she did? She asked me for a ‘boo-boo sticker!’ She didn’t know the word ‘Band-Aid’ so she called it a boo-boo sticker! She’s a genius!”
I determined that that Grandma must be dumb as a post to think “boo-boo sticker” was genius. But what do I know?
Maybe none of us are as smart as we think. After all, of the wealthiest countries in the world, the U.S. has the lowest COVID vaccination rate. The 36% of adults who are still unvaccinated believe that they are smart, too. And they’re literally dying, just to prove it.
Today I was watching Judge Judy (which should tell you something about my intelligence right there). The episode was about a woman who had been suckered into working for a scammer. She’d given the guy $3,500 in cash and $4,000 in jewelry with zero evidence that the scam was even remotely legit.
After the show, the camera crews interviewed the woman outside the court room. She’d just been snookered for nearly $10K and here’s what she told the world: “I’m a Consumer Advocate for the State of Idaho,” she said. “And I thought I was pretty smart!”
That’s when it hit me: we are all idiots who think we’re smart.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the world.