To Feel Dumber
When writing didn’t even go well
“When my child was badly hurt…I forgot the number for 911…” said one of my favorite teachers in middle school, and they’re almost all my favorite.
I think about that all the time, what obvious knowledge is going to jump out of reach when the child is in need? This time it was that we have iodine and cotton swabs in places I should remember — I was using them regularly when the baby was freshly born. Freshly squeezed? Is that too disgusting a turn of phrase? Like Mommy Juice?
“It’s not a juice. It doesn’t come from a fruit,” I said angrily to my sister when she used the horrifying lexical item.
She had a good, clever think and the next day had a brilliant comeback.
“Oh yeah, they come out of melons.”
She didn’t seem to get dumb when she had her first kid.
“Melonade. We can say that instead,” I declared.
Hello friends and supporters,
This is great fun to try and do anything without my computer. It’s not out of commission or anything, I just insist on leaving it at home instead of moving it back and forth between there and here.
Every time I regularly took my computer to school, it died suddenly and dramatically from computer heat stroke, so I lock it up somewhere typhoon and earthquake proof and do everything on my phone instead.
I have surely posted a single thing on my Patreon and probably my ko-fi, but I don’t remember what and it’s more fun if I don’t go look it up just yet.
Surely it is also brilliant and funny.
The best writing is still on my Substack for now. I’m still trying to…think clearly enough to do anything, and when I do anything it will be to have nice things for other people to read.
Substack paywall is still the best way to have an opportunity to reflect therapeutically on my unwise career choices and my colleagues who groomed students without having to put all of that sensitive information directly in the sunlight. It’s got at least a little inconvenience in front of it.
I have the kind of anxiety disorder that makes every task feel like diffusing a bomb in a film and someone always seems to be coming up with an especially sharp object and jabbing me in the ribs while going,
“Hey. Hey. Hey! Hey! Look at me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don’t forget to diffuse that bomb.”
Every task. Finding the chapstick that rolled under the bed is diffusing a bomb. Getting anywhere on time is diffusing a bomb. Everyone who doesn’t let me complete my task is complicit in mass murder. And they don’t seem know how murderous they are. A
I have been waiting for an extra three months to go get an MRI and…it probably won’t have much insight for my help-I’m-dumb-now situation. I have been hoping all along that — after a quick and painless scan —
Either something like, “why yes, here’s the stupidity scars of all the places you used to be smart, but they’re broken now. Here’s a signed, certified letter that no one is allowed to be so mean to you because it’s not your fault that you don’t remember their names or say hi loudly enough.”
OR
“Here’s the switch that’s set to dumb, and now we can set it back to smart and you can go back to being useful enough to earn the right to exist.”
OR
“Actually there’s no physical damage and you could just recover your former intelligence if only you write honestly and personally enough and if everyone reads it.”
I did badly on a written test and it’s embarrassing. I had three hours and I think a wasted a full hour trying to decide which essay question to answer and nearly another being cutely amused by the little map I was supposed to use as reference.
I couldn’t even work in any of the prep work. None of it was relevant. I had barely a page of writing to submit and it was only a summary of my thought process.
It’s upsetting to be dumb. Not only because I can barely do the unsuitable job I’ve been doing for nearly two decades. Not only because my life was built around being booksmart. It’s not shameful to be dumb in and of itself. What’s terrible is how we as a society have agreed that dumb people are allowed to be treated.
The baby is shockingly, frighteningly smart. She understands too much about diaper velcro. She understands that touching the phone correctly makes pictures. She understands that if she kicks furiously enough, the dangly thing will move. She understands that when the milk seems to be running out, the breast can be squeezed for more.
If my ability to think clearly, critically and well were siphoned off to make her some kind of smart child, I guess it’s a worthy cause. More importantly, it came with empathy.
