The man with the foolish grin is sitting perfectly still
Nobody wants to know him
They can see that he's just a fool
But he never gives an answer
But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round
His head in a cloud
The man with a foolish grin is talking perfectly loud
But nobody wants to hear him
They can see that he's just a fool
But he never gives an answer
But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round"
The Beatles-"The Fool On the Hill"
My mom used to always tell me "you are such an intelligent young man"! Many other family friends would also say the same.
There are many days I wish they didn't do that.
Honestly, I am not that smart. Most of the information I retain is useless. Sure, I could tell you what the Philadelphia Phillies record was in 1986 (86 wins, 75 losses) and who the last Frenchman to win a Formula One race was (Olivier Panis, 1996 Monaco Grand Prix), but anything useful? Come on, I'm not your guy. You'd be better off asking someone else.
I am a fool. If making mistakes was an Olympic event, I'd have more medals than Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt. If putting my foot in my mouth was a Formula One race, I'd take pole position, fastest lap, and the race win. I constantly make others angry or annoyed because of it.
I can't stop doing it though.
Each day I say "this is the day I will stop making assumptions about things. This is the day I keep my mouth shut and not pretend to know more about something than I already do." Alas, I keep doing it!
The cycle continues, on and on. My dear wife, God bless her and love her and I am amazed she has stayed with a moron like me for nearly 20 years, tells me I need to stop doing it. I need to just take the advice and learn from it and stop making the same mistake. My brain must short circuit because it keeps happening. Learn, God damn me, learn!
I do enjoy learning and reading about many different topics, especially world history and politics. Yet, I only ever learn enough to know part of the story and not the full experience. I usually end up having to make assumptions based on conjecture or on what I already know. Sometimes, I am close to correct. More often than not though, I am off the mark by a great margin.
Maybe it is out of fear of being called dumb or stupid. I was called that a lot when I was younger. I was in special education classes when I was in school, because my short attention span made it difficult for me to pay attention. I still fight that. It is something you cannot just "stop". Yes, that annoys people too! I still fight the battle of paying attention, or not getting up, or not fidgeting around. It doesn't end. This is part of who I am, like it or not. Accept it. Whether you are family or friend, if you love and care about me, you will accept me as I am.
Those difficulties made it hard to learn things quickly and I still struggle with learning in many ways. For me to learn it, I have to do it. I'll read the same book 5 times to burn all the facts and figures into my brain. My dad drilled me on state capitals at length and shared other random facts that made me hungry to learn more about US and world history. That, and books, books, books. My nose was always in one, and I would keep reading them over and over. Read, read, read.
Whenever I shared something I read out of one of those books with my mom or dad, the "Oh, he's so smart!" praises would come. My grandparents would tell me the same, so would my aunts and uncles, and so would my teachers. I'll be honest, I liked hearing it!
Hello Mom. Hello Dad. I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not a genius. I just read a lot of stuff a thousand times over and remember it well because I read it so much. That does not make me smart, it makes me literate.
I never learned how to balance a budget in school, and I'm still not great at it. If I wasn't married to a woman who is amazing with numbers as she is in life, I'd be living in a van down by the river. I never learned how to do algebra. I know enough about things to know I don't know enough about them. It hasn't done me much good in life. Life is not a Trivial Pursuit game. The only thing knowing all that silly shit has given me is the ability to annoy the living hell out of others with my useless facts. I'd much rather know how to balance a checkbook than know what city is known as the "Rubber Capital of the World" (Akron, Ohio). Fuck that stuff. I wish I could forget it all.
All reading and learning that stuff did was made me think I knew more about topics than I actually did. It made me an intelligent idiot. What I had learned had given me a wide range of knowledge on a little bit of a lot of things, but no DEPTH. I had the who and the what, but not the how and the why, yet I still acted like I knew the how and the why. Why did I still speak up in those situations?
Because I did not want to look like a big dummy.
What I should remember is the old saying "Better that people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt". So what do I do? Open my mouth and remove all doubt.
Lately, I have been doing my best to correct that habit. Yet, I still have trouble checking my sources. I still find myself getting into discussions on emotion alone but with no facts. It has lessened greatly, but it still happens and that is not good enough. It's a bad habit and I want it gone.
Thanks, mom. Your positive reinforcement inflated my young ego and made me into a know-it-all who doesn't know shit, and as some one who cares strongly what others think of him (due to having a low-self esteem), I don't want to be a know-it-all. What I want is the wisdom to say the words "I don't know". There is power in those words. Of course, there are the numbskulls who say "what do you mean you don't know?" and make you feel like an idiot. When that happens, the opportunity to be goaded in to giving an answer without supporting facts or research is high for me.
Then, the fool opens his mouth and removes all doubt again, and as God as my witness, I am that fool. Lead me to my throne and hand me my bauble.
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