Intellectual Snob

I never woulda thunk

I am an intellectual snob. Who’d a’ thunk? I hadn’t realized it myself before reading what turned out to be a click-bait headline for what turned out to be a non-article on a subject that turned out to encompass nothing more than the headline’s reveal, which was anti-breaking news.

Say what?

Exactly.

The headline touted the discovery of a neanderthal jawbone whose carbon marking indicated it was 100-200,000 years old. The opening paragraph repeated that news, separating it into three sentences.

Then there was a pull-quote thingy with a one-liner author bio, identical to the one-liner above-the-headline author bio in the pre-lead to the headline.

We got a short paragraph on the explorers who made the discovery before repeating the headline reveal in another pull quote

The text finally launched into what I supposed would be the meat of the piece, but alas, the topic apparently had already been gnawed to the bone. A line or two about how this and other discoveries indicated two separate neanderthal civilizations existed mere miles from each other for time out of mind without knowing about each other.

One apparently went extinct from lack of diversity; the other theoretically diversified with homo sapiens before following suit.

Followed by an excerpt about the explorers. All interspersed with pull-quote-esq ads.

The wrap thrillingly reiterated the jawbone discovery, its age, the scientific journal the explorers finally published in, the two-civilizations theory, and a nod to the importance of this knowledge, i.e., a line stating this was an important find… period. Ring the bell, close the book, blow out the candle.

I once worked with a memoirist who, mindful to include “reflection” in his work, wrote “I never forgot that lesson” at the end of every chapter without ever once clueing the reader in to what said lessons were.

Wherefore my ton-of-bricks self-recognition of intellectual snobbery, which confuses me since, to paraphrase Will Rogers, I never met a man I didn’t think was smarter than me.

I’ve always known I’m slow. Not stupid, not retarded—a now-taboo slur that was very much alive and flung around in my formative years, specifically in my direction to remind me not to pretend I was—just not quite up to speed. The fault, dear Brutus, lay not in the stars but in my own deficiency, teachers admonished. My immediate world consisted of very sharp people whose conversation typically centered on who was the smarter, the quicker, the most perceptive, the furthest along. They unanimously agreed was I didn’t have to always be a beat or two behind; I just stubbornly refused to put in the effort to stay up.

Alas, I was not in on that consensus and had clue none how to quicken myself up.

By the way, that immediate world was bigger than my nuclear family; it included my extended relatives and beyond to my whole community. I was “other” from every aspect in every direction. “An ‘A’ is a good grade—for an average student” dinged my electromagnetic vibrations. The ones over which we (theoretically) have control with positive thinking, affirmations, behavioral treatment, pharmaceutical intervention, and good ‘ol faith in an almighty made-in-man’s-image deity.

Oh, I learned early the value of silence, for whenever I dumbasfuck stuck my nose out enough to sniff the rarified air outside, I paid dearly. On the upside—for there cannot exist a down without an up—I never had to rebuff accusations of being an intellectual snob, as others around me did.

One thing I couldn’t do wrong. Ya gotta take yer victories however they come.

As I pushed into my singularly non-invincible adolescence and twenties, I learned also to substitute diligence for deets. Thank Murgatroyd, most real-world people were closer to my brainpower and thought speed than those of my tender years. I easily scammed my way from one job to another, never overstaying my façade.

It was a damn good one, if I do say so myself.

No one cared that I had to pedal harder to keep up with the crowd… which I just now realized may explain why I’ve always been so tired. In the vernacular era of “handicapped” (not disabled), I could joke away my innate non-retentiveness and move on before it—or my unwarranted independence or craving for change—became an issue.

I leaned into familiar-and-comfortable silence every time I sussed out how to do something easier, faster, or better. Did I privately believe myself mentally advanced? Hahaha… I secretly assumed it was only a matter of time before I got routed. Boredom may have been my go-to excuse for quitting every job; in truth, I instinctively knew a moving target was harder to hit.

… if’n I’m being honest, a lot of that was less about how smart or dumbasfuck I was in any given situation and more about how I talked, thought, and acted. I hid in plain sight my whole life; no one suspected I wasn’t female because that sensibility had been socially buried for thousands of years. I once lost a temp job because I forgot to put on makeup that morning. I didn’t forget; I didn’t own any. Another time I got sent home because I wasn’t wearing a bra. That wasn’t a memory lapse; I hated the things and was small enough at the time I figured no one would notice.

No superhero brains there! In fact, lived example after lived example left no illusions about where I fell on the intelligence spectrum. ‘Twas pointless to flunk yet another test—academic, medical, military, or corporate—to prove my superiority/inferiority complex was naught but self-delusionary bull hockey.

So whereupon did I snob up? Mighta taken root with my first professional accomplishment: writing For Musicians Only (FMO).

I know, I know… I’d borne and birthed a beautiful child, a certified genius, and given my voluptuous figure and vocal pitch should thus consider her my greatest achievement.

But given also my dual nature, aka nonbinary essence and spiritual connexons, I consider her as what she is: a wise, beautiful old soul to whom I lent my womb and what little comfort, solace, and insight I could whilst she needed it in this incarnation. I have no illusions about that, either. She parented me better than I her.

Granted, I’d previously achieved some minor onstage success cracking jokes and helping facilitate Tom’s creds, but to what end? The humor evaporated within nanoseconds and supporting my soul’s mate was part-and-parcel to our marital purpose. But FMO came out of my head through my hands and onto the physical paper I audaciously sent off to acquisition editors I had found.

Milquetoast me. No snobbery space for that achievement, though, being preoccupied as I was raising a “severely gifted” child who justifiably (and irritably as far as both grandmothers were concerned) took up space in the world from age birth—

… mollifying, caring for, and being a sounding board for a talented yet non-ambitious husband—

… coping with myriad symptoms that didn’t exist because, as I’d been admonished repeatedly for years, there was nothing wrong with me—unless you thought those two “multiple sclerosis” diagnoses (age fifteen and thirty-two) were actually real, and who had the time (or money) for that?—

… and, of course, paying the food, the rent, and the utilities without (benefit of Dolly Parton’s Chicken Ranch vocals), and handling all my other wife-and-mother duties, including, if I have the timing right, disregarding a miscarriage because, ya know, what the hell.

A long-ago friend once said if’n I’d go down on my knees, get my hands dirty planting a garden, and nurture growing things, it would enhance my self-esteem and bring me closer to the oneness of us all.

She lost me at “down on my knees,” not exactly one of my fortes. She had a tendency to berate me for not believing in myself. Words cannot adequately express how helpful (not) such admonishments are.

I’m pretty sure my conceit hadn’t yet kicked in when I decided I’d become pointless, partially because I wasn’t explaining my ghostwriting process to my students well enough. I turned out to be wrong on both counts; the entire cohort passed with flying colors and nine months of My Life as a Turtle dismantled my exit commitment.

So I guess my scribblings at Secrets of a Ghostwriter must have set me up to think I think more gooder than (at least some) others. I don’t know why; it mostly feels like a long justification for why I’ve been able to help people launch their careers and fulfill their literary dreams. Which has been, after all, my stated life’s purpose for thirty-some-odd years.

That’s not intellectual snobbery, though, merely a tribute to my long-standing workaround, diligence.

Wait… did I just do a 1,400+ word gut spill in knee -jerk reaction to that unsatisfying, click-baiting, non-breaking-news, non-article?

Aw, geez, how dumbasfuck is that?!