How smart are you?

 I wrote the beginning of this super, high concept story as my very first blog entry on here. It is about reading books in heaven. It isn't supposed to be a holy book as much as it just kind of points out that you are what you eat.

When I was young I had all these intelligent people around me. My grandfather, who built the first computer in Memphis, Tennessee and my brother, who aparently could remember anything and read like a junior in highschool in 3rd grade. My mother likes to say she wrote books in grade school, has written screenplays poetry and novels, and she says she is smart, too. I never really considered myself to be one of them. I liked to paint abstract pictures, no real aptitude there, and thought of myself like a background feature among these gifted people.

But for whatever reason I guess I was always drawn to the idea of greatness. It couldn't be because they were so great? Could it? I don't know. I like to think that natural curiosity is the reason. 

My grandmother had a separate bookshelf in her den with the Great Books on it, near the floor and right by the back door so I have a memory of being there, sitting in sunlight, probably hunched over, bangs in my eyes, the sun flitting through the wisps of dark hair in sparkles and flashes. And I picked out books, and I guess I read some of them, beginning with The Brothers Karamazov, which starts out really well. I borrowed books, and what really ruined me was reading Freud and thinking, you know, I think like that? I am smart! First of all, gross, secondly, I was 16! I fear it may have had to do with being a product of the 1990s and having tried marijuana and thinking it made some kind of changes to your consciousness. I used to say it made your subconscious conscious. A waking dream state, if you will.

I don't know if I was right or not but that doesn't make you Sigmund Freud. Also, being smart is only a bit of what it takes to be great. There's a lot of other things, and some of it is dumb luck because I am pretty sure there are a lot of folks around with great moms, dads, sisters, cousins etc. that no one knows anything about. 

Anyway, it has been something I have been interested in my whole adult life and sort of a hobby of mine. Which is why I have to share  this with you. I have been following a thread on Quora, and it is just so fun to read. It is not to make fun of, but rather to feel light of heart at those among us whose IQ score plague their lives. Us peons who do the dirty work of children of lesser gods, we can marvel at their struggles to fit in. 

Quora doesn't share links, so I have shared with photos.