Chapter 7: I Want To Scream!

I WANT TO SCREAM! My wife was working in the garage today. She came into our bedroom where I do my work from during one of her breaks. She wants me to get rid of most of my books because I’m not smart enough to understand them anymore. Not my fiction collection, but my hard and soft sciences and language, theology books. I couldn’t even argue the point. I told her I was going to keep some for sentimental reasons. It made me cry. I had to get off the phones for a few minutes.

I had built so much of my self image around my intelligence. My ability to remember and integrate facts across a wide range of subjects. Oh, I know I wasn’t the smartest. I studied under people who made scary smart people look stupid. I knew I was smart enough to hold my own against most. I wouldn’t have been afraid to tackle an expert on his own field if I was given enough lead time. I gloried in it. It was the one place I felt respected.

I grew up without a father in a time when that mattered. You were treated as if you were socially inferior if you didn’t have two parents. Some parents literally wouldn’t let you be around their children or god forbid talk to their daughters. This wasn’t guesswork some of these people would tell you why you couldn’t spend time around their family. We were poor. In “Pursuing Andrea” Michael tells Andrea about cutting his hand with an ax while trying to cut wood when it was 14 below because his mother and sister were cold. That really happened. I was 12. I didn’t own gloves and socks don’t do shit when it’s that cold.