Too smart my ass!

I’m a bit of a nerd, and by a bit I mean a lot.  I grew up an introverted kid, more comfortable in the fictional world of Picha Hadithi and Enid Blyton than in the real world around me.  Granted, this could also be because I was a rotund child, that’s PC for a fat little blob by the way, I looked like a walking basketball with an afro, an analogy unfortunately not that far off the mark when you consider that my school uniform was yellow/orange with vertical stripes.  I was a round little thing with little to no athletic ability, non-existent hand/eye co-ordination and overactive sweat glands.  Primo being what it was, rather than try to compete with the abnormally agile superstar kids who made their name and fame in exploits such as long jump, I competed at my desk, and I kicked ass, some ass at least.  And I was teased mercilessly for being the smart kid in class, but that just made me the stubborn idiot I am now no?  The benefit of my childhood lack of (mis)adventures is that I had loads of time to read growing up, and read I did, constantly, anything and everything.  My mother was a librarian and my father was a former teacher, books were the one constant in their house.  Well, books and potatoes (hence rotund-ness, no?).  And James Bond, but that’s a story for another day.    

Fast forward a decade later and I’m in campus, having grown significantly taller and marginally less rotund and therefore no longer looking like an inflated sports object, I was no longer the quiet girl in the class.  I was (trying to be) the loud tomboy in a class full of men, this in my attempt to fit in with the boys.  Unfortunately, there too, in an institution devoted to learning and pursuit of knowledge, I was not so kindly informed that I was ‘too smart’, and I was flabbergasted.  See, I mistakenly thought that university was the one place I would be able so set my intellect free to roam without the disapproving looks of the stiff teachers in my catholic high school, they who kept trying to mould me into a nun, unsuccessfully if this blog is anything to go by.  To be honest with you, I took the ‘too smart’ statement as yet another piece of sexist crap being thrown at me by the nasty old men that were my lecturers, and as such brushed it off with the disdain it so rightly deserved. 

Years later and I’m sitting in the local with the fellas and every so often one of those idiots will turn to me and say, ‘You know what (not) Alex, I think you’re too smart for your own good!’, and then he turns away and continues picking tics out of his fur, or whatever it is that those of you who are not ‘too smart’ do with your free time.    And why did the idiots keep saying that?  Could be because I was always the more sober idiot reminding them not to approach the hot chick in the corner, seeing as how they would always forget that said hot chick was a high maintenance, crazy stalker who was allegedly, allegedly mind you, a crap lay.  It could also possibly be because of my fondness for having random discussions about the state of the world at 2 in the morning.  Perhaps I’m still a bit of a nerd.  Perhaps.  And then to cap it all off, one Flani, having discovered one random morning that there’s more to my house than bitching about bad sex and foolish men, pulls out the tried and tested phrase and throws it in my face, in my house no less.  Shame man!  “You are too smart for your own good…”  What the hell does that mean?  I’ve been hearing this all my life and all my life my response has always been, “Eh?”  Is this a good thing or a bad thing, Flani?  You can’t issue provocative statements like that and then crawl back into cyber space, that’s just wrong!  Come back here and explain yourself.  While we wait for him to show up and give a good account of himself, what say we proceed?

What I don’t understand is this, how can someone be ‘too smart’?  Is that intended to mean a smartass who doesn’t have the good sense to know when to shut up?  If that’s the case then I guess I can understand, no one likes a smart ass, usually they get slapped, or shot, for saying the right thing to the wrong person, at the wrong time.  I’ve never been slapped, or shot, so I’m going to assume I’m not a smartass.  Perhaps then, being ‘too smart’ refers to someone who uses their intellect to bully others into submission?  That, I admit, I am guilty of, but only because it’s an occupational hazard.  Every so often I have to wow some idiot with my (allleged) brilliance, its called shock and awe people, designed to confuse someone long enough for them to sign the check.  But on the blog?  How now?  When you buggers don’t like what I have to say you just bugger off, I couldn’t bully you if I wanted to.  Hang on, those are all examples of too smart, but they don’t speak to the ‘for your own good’ part of that claim, do they?  The implication of that phrase is that one’s intelligence is harmful to one’s goals.  You’re shooting yourself in the foot, basically, is what that says.  Which then begs the question, what goals are these I’m trying to achieve that my (alleged) intelligence is hampering?  My never ending quest to get a better income/life/man/MP?  For 20 odd years random men, and a few women, have been throwing this line at me without ever bothering to explain. 

Now that I think about it, I’ve only heard the phrase being used to refer to women and cheeky children, very rarely men.  My nephew is constantly being warned that he’s ‘too smart for his own good’, this by his father, my brother, as he watches his son do something uniquely foolish, like try to go down the stairs on his belly, head first.  Is that what they mean when these geniuses use that phrase to describe me?  Am I going down the proverbial stairs, head first?

The reason I started off by telling you about my childhood was to show you that, while I am a woman of (not very) many talents, I consider my mind my most impressive feature, better even than my (perhaps not so) ample bosom.  For a long time, all I had going for me was my ability to recite the names of all the rivers in Africa, alphabetically, and other such like trivia nonsense.  Even now, my intellect is my defence mechanism, when threatened, or insulted, or simply feeling insecure, I whip out my brain and beat you into submission (see the last post for confirmation of said sad fact).  So when someone turns around and tells me my intellect is the cause of my problems (eh?), then I take great offence.  I know, it’s probably meant as a backhanded compliment, but it isn’t, it’s the equivalent of saying, ‘for all the crap you know, you still don’t know anything, do you?’  It’s mildly patronising to be honest. 

But it’s also very true.

You didn’t expect that did you?  You thought I was going to sit here and wax lyrical about how women are treated unfairly and how a man never has his intelligence questioned, such like feminist rubbish, no?  Ha!  Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m just as much a chauvinist as the idiots who throw this line at me.  Back in my 20’s, I was an unapologetic feminist, I not only believed that women were equal to men, I expected every man I met to treat me as such.  And they did.  And it was horrible.  For a woman trying to be a man is tiring, it drains you, physically and mentally, and spiritually if that’s even possible.  For me to be a man, I had to spend every waking minute denying what I was, living a double life so to speak, eventually it got to the point that I started to forget that I had soft skin, hairless legs and ovaries.  Frustrated, I finally gave up that quest and embraced my fate as the (allegedly) weaker sex.  These days, I have no interest in being a man, I like being a woman, very much.  I get to sit down when I pee, for example, gives me time to do sudoku and codeword, brilliant no?  We’re different, is what I’m saying, and that’s okay.

But that doesn’t answer the dilemma does it?  How smart is too smart?  The reason I agree with the idea that ‘for all I know, I really don’t know’ is this, I forget to switch my brain off sometimes.  Sometimes, I insist on making decisions that should be made with my heart, with my head instead, insisting that I have to know where I’m going and see it clearly ahead of me, before I actually start moving in that direction.  Rather than just go with the flow and be loose like a langa, I insist on asking all manner of inappropriate questions, trying to rationalise and analyse and make scientific deductions.  I forget that when you’re dealing with another human being, or a man, sometimes the rational part of you should not be involved.  A man tells me he thinks I’m pretty, and I immediately start thinking, ‘Now what does this punk want and what will it cost me?’  He tells me he thinks I’m funny and I tell him to go read Joseph Heller, now he’s a really funny man.  He tells me Henry is the greatest player ever and I tell him to stop smoking crack and go watch a game outside of the EPL.  And on and on and on...  I really don’t know when to shut the fuck up.  So I guess that makes me a smartass, huh?  Ah well, it could be worse, I have yet to be shot, no?  I will say this, the one advantage to the head first approach to descending stairs, is that I usually see the fall coming, as it will inevitably come, won’t it?

The point to my rambling?  I’ve learnt that there are times when you need to be smart, by not being smart.  Almost every smart woman I know will tell you the exact same thing, it’s not about playing dumb, it’s simply a case of balance.  Ladies, our brains are like mini skirts, show too little and you won’t attract any attention, show too much and you attract all the wrong attention.  Mid-thigh is what you’re aiming for.  Unless, of course, you’re trying to scare him off, in which case take the skirt off and flash him for all you’re worth, nothing gets rid of an idiot faster than a woman who’s read the constitution, old and new.  I’m just saying...  Now while I continue to struggle to find the balance between being smart and too smart, often losing the battle I might add, I relish the challenge.  No, I’m not a masochist, well I might be, but not in this context.  Thing is, I’m convinced that men are, for the most part, idiots, even the smart ones.  No really, idiots.  It’s like watching lab rats in a cage, spinning their little wheels faster and faster, and going nowhere all the same.  You buggers just don’t get it, but bless you, you keep trying, don’t you?  

Was that suitably patronising, gentlemen?  Now you know how I feel.  Ha!  Come now my lovelies, don’t sulk, absolutely no offence intended whatsoever.  You know I love your foolishness, even when it drives me up the wall.  Really.  I did warn you though, I told you I’m a chauvinist, but you didn’t think it could work both ways, did you?


POSTSCRIPT
Turns out there is an entire industry devoted to just this topic, with everyone from serious researchers to wiseass bloggers throwing in their two cents.  Check out Why the smartest people have the toughest time dating and Too smart for your own good.