I Are Smart

Year Of The Rat 4706
8 January 2009  AD
Thursday, 2036 hrs CST
Stormcrow Ranch
Boone, IA
USA
"Squirrel Corn Capital of The World."

At the moment, silence reigns in the house.
    Now, when I say 'silence,' I mean there are noises in the background--the furnace laboring against 6 degrees F; the creak of a 35 year-old house still settling after the floods of spring and early summer 2008 here in Iowa, a bit of looping commercials every twelve minutes on the TV in the near-great room, a tumbled rack of crescent ice in the kitchen...
    But, at the moment, no music.
    And, for once, no long thoughts in my head.
    I can fix one....  (Mozart; no, wait! Here:  Beethoven! Yes. Perfect.  'My beloved Ludwig Van.') But often not the other. The thoughts just are/will come/may be.
     My days are mostly like this:  Go to bed, thrash in bed till before dawn, get up, make coffee, blink to wash away dreams and get to seeing in color again, step onto the deck to watch dawn approach(though, truth to tell not long during winter in Iowa) with a cigarette; back into the house to check 'The Jukebox.'
    Once all the e-mails are blinked, and sometimes answered, I sign off and play Solitaire.
    This, to me, is often more accurate than any horoscope or Chinese Zodiac.  Though the odds are static, my choices are not.  The odds of winning straight solitaire are 11%, or roughly, one time in ten. So, I figure, if I win, something great is coming my way.
    I won three times straight this morning.  I took this as a sign and waited all day for Publisher's Clearing House to show up, running to the windows like an abandoned senior-citizen every time I heard a car on the street, smoothing my hair, picking up newspapers and half-eaten bowls of Raman noodles, wondering... dreaming... hoping.
    By the the time it got dark, the house was clean and I had finished three crossword puzzles in ink, written about 4,000 words, and dealt with a small-claims court server, as well as watching the Unsolved Mysteries marathon on Spike.
    Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I do have a little bit of moxie on my curve....
    Wait.  Some back story here:  the average IQ is just under 120.  Genius is considered to be 140.  This scale goes both higher and lower, but those are the only two numbers I know for sure(you'll have to do your own research to check my veracity). I was curious as to where I rated.
    So, I took one of those on-line IQ tests.  This was Second Ex-Wife era(circa 1994(?)-1998), back when Windows was still listed as 3.5.  Somehow, I took the test in German the first time, but the test seemed simple enough even though I didn't speak the language--match patterns, choose from four choices, finish this math--the usual stuff.  It was sorta like the minor league baseball play-offs for Mensa.  Well, in German, I scored a 126.  I figured out the mouse click error, re-took the test in English and scored 123.
    Back to the story:
    But, as we all have, we have dealt with people both greater and lesser than what we perceive ourselves to be.  There are some people whose charm intimidates us, there are some people whose intelligence intimidates us, and, truth to tell, there are some people whose luck intimidates us.  Admit it.
    I do not want to be any of these persons.
    Thomas Jefferson once said, "I believe in luck because I create it myself.'  Well, no he didn't say that, but you almost bought it, but he is quoted as saying something like that.  But I far prefer Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's quote which I can quote verbatim and by heart:

"Who then is the better man:  he who battled the storm at sea and lived, or he who stood on the shore and merely watched?"

(I have a sudden and troubling memory that I've written this quote before in this venue;  never mind, It bears repeating, but please find me an editor who watches these things.  I prefer new words).
    So, I are smart.  Just 14 points off Genius.  I can name all the parts of a mushroom, I can 'do the math for stairs.' I know about a hundred thousand words, I know the capital of South Dakota, I know chemical difference between sodium chloride and potassium chloride.
    But can I balance a check book, can I keep a job without getting bored, can I make love last?  No.  These things are beyond me, and my intellect, and my intelligence.
    Through it all, I strive, and I always,
    'Rage, rage,...'

~Hob

Post Script:  Upon re-reading this entry, and the ones prior, I have noticed a certain positivity, a  'glass half-full' option.  Sorry.  I will be more balanced in the future.

~H