He Isn't Right

My brother always told me I was dumb. Not daily but often enough I got that he considered it his mission in life to make me believe it. He was clearly in league with my mother, or she with him, who would say, "Men don't like smart women so being dumb is good."

Those may not have been her exact words but there was a whole lexicon of of them she marched out. Her top priorities for me were dates, marriage and kids. I was a huge disappointment because in my first year of college I did not get my MRS degree. I constantly got lectures about not studying at the law library, majoring in Fine Arts because I wanted to curate a museum and not decorate the nursery, and not going to church to catch a man. I might have gotten her to drop that last one if I had not constantly broken into lectures about religion being the opiate of the masses and Zen was the way.

It was my father who revealed to me the results of my IQ scores from routine school tests to talk me out of attempting a Master's. But having my brother tell me daily I was dumb was hard to override. A lie becomes the truth when repeated often as the political parties of the US have now proven. I graduated from college and my brother didn't. He went on to write computer code for programs, I became a project engineer and at one time wrote manuals for the mere mortals who had to use those programs. But to the very last day of our communications he told me I was dumb.

Still I was always seduced by intelligence. It may be the new sexy for this generation but it was always the sexiest thing for me. Even in causal friendships brains is a major factor. It may be that or the fact I am an introvert but I do not do casual chit chat well. Even a chance meeting with a friend in the freezer department of the store can progress rapidly to the global implication of Chinese Tilapia in Albertson stores in the United States. I am sure Google and Wiki were designed for me.

As my very intelligent late husband used to say, I do not tolerate fools gladly. So you can imagine how very thrilled I am at the results of the last election. Maybe Mom was right and I would have been happier had I been dumb like my brother constantly told me. But I doubt it.

The coming four years is not going to be easy. Trump reminds me too much of my brother. And I don't like speeches where every three word sentence is repeated three times as if I am the dumb one. I just won't watch his speeches. And maybe I will learn to chit chat since dumb is now the new normal. Somehow I doubt it. I expect I will just spend more time on Google and Wiki.

I am considering doing a cross stitch sampler which says, "You Don't Have to be Intelligent to be Elected."