The Family Idiot

I'm pretty sure I'm the dumbest member of my family. There are a few of the others that have actively campaigned for the position a time or two, but I think I've still got it locked up. I grew up the younger sister of two of the smartest people I've ever met. My intellectual capabilities will always pale in comparison. I'm okay with that. I wasn't always okay with it. There was a time when I was pretty much convinced that I was born a hopeless idiot...okay, by "there was a time," I mean clear into college I operated under that impression. I figured on a good day I was of average intelligence. Then at some point I had a break through where I realized that I've never met a stupid person who was worried about their own stupidity. Turns out that ignorance really is bliss. After that I was able to reason that I may not be a total moron. I also attended a community college where everyone believed me to be a genius, which solidified my suspicions that I'm actually relatively intelligent. Now I've embraced the fact that being the dumb one in my family, doesn't mean that I'm stupid.

This whole idea was reaffirmed to me tonight. I was trying to prep for a Statistics quiz. I just hit a wall where I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on, or how I was ever going to pass the quiz. So I finally broke down and called John for help. Heaven only knows why I haven't asked for his assistance earlier. I asked him if he wanted to log on to this website they have set up for the class so that he could view the textbook, and he told me that he wasn't interested in logging on because "I don't need to look at that. I'm smarter than your textbook." I believed him, and as it turns out, he is smarter than my textbook, or at least he makes more sense. I'll admit that I was initially quite annoyed when he refused to just give me the steps to the problems, but insisted that I have to learn what all those numbers are about. I thought I might get away with just idly listening to these explanations that weren't making much sense, and eventually he'd get around to giving me the equations. It just didn't work that way, he kept making me stop and explain to him what the numbers mean, and why they need to be subtracted, added, divided, and whatever else. Weirdly, by the end of it all I actually seemed to be grasping what we were talking about. All of this sans the textbook on his end. There is no longer any doubt in my mind. I am smart, but next to that...it's no wonder I grew up thinking I was an idiot.