April 13th, 2009

There can be no doubt that these rants are self-serving, self-referential, self-obsessed, and even, sometimes, self-conscious.

What can I say? I'm no different than most people about these things. I promote myself and believe in myself, and the fact that people come and read my rants means that at least a few people in the world can tolerate me.

So if I talk at length about my childhood, then those who don't care can always just hit the Back button on their browser, or click their favourite fashion blog or geeksite instead. Go ahead, I don't mind. :-)

As I have talked about off and on for the last 18 months or so, I am a member of Mensa. I wrote their invigilated test and I passed. And a lot of things came into focus for me that had previously been obvious but for the observing of it: I am not exactly normal. I used to see myself as casual, laid-back, smart maybe, but not exceptional. Or really stupid, maybe; I wasn't sure. And any time I differed from that view of myself—which was just about always—I got frustrated and felt crappy about myself. I am not normal. I am smarter than your average bear. Actually, I'm smarter than your above-average bear.

And what it puts into perspective for me now as an adult is how different my childhood and adolescence were than even I realised.

As a child, I had a growing feeling that there was something wrong with me. I never fit in. If I behaved in a way that was normal and natural for me, I got laughter and ridicule from the other kids. Worse, I got mostly laughter and ridicule from other parents and especially my teachers. Yes, sad to say, I was smarter than every one of my elementary school teachers (in some cases by a long shot) and smarter than a lot of my high school teachers. They all thought I was an average student (based on my perplexingly average grades—I seldom lifted a finger to put in the effort and still passed with a comfortable margin) who acted weird and sometimes frustratingly.

A lot of resentment from my teachers, and a lot of angst on my part because of it.

Some Mensans grew more and more aware that they weren't just different, they were smarter; however, I never felt that way. The more I didn't fit in as I got older, the more I secretly harboured the idea that I was stupid. The jokes were funny for others but I wasn't smart enough to understand them (when, really, I understood them just fine; I simply didn't find them funny). I overthought everything from the way people communicated with each other (I thought everyone talked in a secret code I just hadn't figured out yet) to the way other people just did things without a thought of the problems inherent or the potential risks—I admired other peoples' fearlessness, not realising that they just weren't smart enough to be paralysed into inaction by the possible future outcomes, since they just couldn't see them.

I spent so damned much of my outside life self-censored and hesitant that I didn't do anything. It made me into a homebody because home was safe. Solitude was safe. Even the few friendships I had were always on the others' terms; their intellects were the lowest common denominator, so I had to change my demeanour and attitudes to fit in with them. Whenever I opened up enough to show my true self they either didn't get it (like colours to a colour-blind man) or thought I was just being funny. Ever shown your true self only to get laughter back in response? After enough of that it becomes so hard to show your true self that it's just easier to stay shuttered and stupid.

By putting on a persona for the rest of the world, I made myself a very limited person. Even someone as smart as I can't live the fake life for long without appearing a bit pale and strange. The best actor in the world couldn't live that way forever; either he becomes that average dullard he is pretending to be (luckily this never happened to me) or he chafes and stretches to break out of the self-imposed boundaries and become a Hedonist or a wild reactionary ... or just have a nervous breakdown (or worse).

Speaking personally, I was headed for the last of those options with a tinge of the middle one. I had to jettison a few things or else I would ruin myself and the great mind I was lucky enough to be born with. One other danger was that the alcohol I found in my early adult years made me stupid enough to get along for short periods of time, and the attraction was not the best avenue for fitting in. I made a conscious decision to not make alcohol my friendship grease ... well, not regularly, anyway!

First thing was confirmation: The Mensa test was as good as anything else at getting myself convinced beyond that horrible doubt that I really was exceptional. Second thing was to jettison some attitudes about myself and not be afraid of those parts of me that truly were superior. As a wonderful side-effect of knowing my strengths, I was also able to finally admit to myself—and thus be less defensive about—my weaknesses. Third, I had to dispassionately refine what among my few friends' behaviours I would continue to tolerate, and what I was ready to throw away with the old self-damaging me. In one case, I just threw the whole friend away after I realised how much back-stabbing, sabotaging, undermining, and criticising he subjected me to over the years! As it turns out, between the two of us, I was the only friend. Realising that abuse and dealing with it was a very positive step in my life.

I'm not at the end of any process, though. I may have built up a better set of defences against the great unwashed out there, but having such a high IQ just makes me, quite literally, a deviant. I am as exceptional as someone with an IQ of 60 who can barely function in the world. I am as different as albinos, the extremely obese, anorexics, or schizophrenics. And don't think that I can just survive fine over a certain IQ in this sub-gifted world of ours with nothing but ease. The whole world is geared so that normal people survive, smart people thrive, but exceptional people suffer. And that includes the seemingly innocuous such as chit-chat while standing in line at the coffee shop to the critical over-thinking-based disasters that some of us occasionally find our ways into. We assume the world, including traffic stoplights, airline schedules, banking machines, supermarket aisles, vending machines, etc. will all work with the logic that is perfectly natural to us. Except they don't and we make mistakes because of it. Dealing with the physical world still requires us to bend ourselves into that lowest common denominator. Deviants indeed.

That struggle continues and may always do so, but as an adult I can deal with it. Simply knowing my place atop the intelligence food chain makes a big and positive difference that I never had when I was a child. As a child when I couldn't deal properly with my physical world, I just thought I was stupid. And hated myself a little more for it.

There is one other thing about having a high IQ: There is still that resentment I felt from my teachers and other parents, only this time it comes from all directions. I actually hid the fact I was a member of Mensa from the people hiring me for my current job because I didn't want the associated stigma that inevitably comes with it. Like being a prize fighter in prison: Everyone wants to take a swing at you. And the derision calling me elitist and arrogant, accusing me of a superior and/or dismissive attitude was just too much to fight—especially when I'm trying to get a job.

I'm really not all that proud of my high intelligence, since by itself it is regularly beaten by the average person with determination and drive. A smart lazy person accomplishes just as little as a normal lazy person. And it took me a long time to develop better habits, since smart and lazy was the tendency (not a hard-and-fast rule, though) when I was a child. I tended to not prepare, to not show my work since it took time I didn't want to spend, and shortcuts, especially the smarter-not-harder shortcuts taught me little in the way of good work and study habits. In fact, it wasn't until university where, through a series of painful failures, I finally tuned in to the necessity of -er- actually studying and working towards a goal.

That, by the way, is what I now realise to be an almost classic Mensan experience. The exceptions are for those children who have their high IQ recognised when they are still very early in their education, and given special treatment and education. In my case recognition and intervention would have made me excel sooner than I did, and in other peoples' cases alleviate a lot of delinquent behaviour in those kids so bored that undermining and destroying order was the only option available without internalizing it and going crazy.

* * *

So how did I start this rant today? "There can be no doubt that these rants are self-serving, self-referential, self-obsessed, and even, sometimes, self-conscious."

Sure, and more, too: I am being somewhat self-righteous. But one thing this discussion gives me is a sense of self-assuredness that threatens and undermines the self-doubt that plagued me all of my childhood and most of my adult life.

It helps a lot.

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