Over the course of the last few years, I've gradually come to suspect something unpleasant about myself that I can't wholly dismiss.
I'm a great deal less intelligent than I like to think.
Want an example? I recently got into a grammar-quiz competition with a college friend. The rules are simple. She sends me, either by e-mail or text message, a word picked at random from a dictionary. If I know the word, I send back the definition. If I don't, I take my best guess. The original purpose of the game, as stated by my friend, is twofold: she gets to be dazzled by my reputedly impressive vocabulary, and she also learns the meaning of a few words herself.
The score currently stands at 1-3. I knew the meaning of one word ("descry") while the definitions of the remaining three words ("foofaraw," "titivate," and "convivial") abjectly defeated me.
As such, this pastime has served a second purpose, likewise twofold: it has simultaneously shown me that I (a) don't have nearly as many words in my vocabulary as I have loudly and proudly proclaimed in the past; and (b) that, while I understand the connotation of many uncommon English words, I am increasingly unable to articulate their literal denotation. There once was a time, back during my homeschooling days, when I could rattle off word definitions like I'd swallowed Merriam and Webster. Now, either because my reading and writing habits have gone into a decline in recent years, or because I have allowed myself to become mentally lazy, or because I drink too much—those days are gone. I forget words I used to know (and cherish) and find it difficult to properly and eloquently verbalize the meanings of others.
In short, I'm a pretender. A fake. A phony. A fraud. A charlatan. I claim to be a wordsmith, a grammarian knowledgeable of bizarre and unusual diction, and yet I'm not. Heck, I only vaguely know the meaning of most of the words I routinely use in conversation or print; I certainly don't understand many of their roots, proper usage, or (as previously mentioned) even their literal definition.
I have forgotten most of what I learned in ground school in the spring of 2008, and with my flight physical (and therefore, my first flying lesson in over 16 months) drawing nearer, I am frantically paging back through all of my pilot's textbooks to try and rebuild the dike. Most of what I read I remember, but had wholly forgotten in the meantime.
Another, more painful example is my recent dismissal from the newspaper I worked at. I simply wasn't intelligent enough to get my mind in gear, learn lessons the first time, quit making stupid and obvious blunders, and write the way I was supposed to write. This is neither the first example of such bumbling idiocy which I have exhibited, nor will it be the last.
This worries me deeply. If my vaunted literary prowess—hell, my mental prowess in general—is crumbling now, what kind of state will it be in when I'm forty? Fifty? Eighty? I don't want to wind up one of those cranky, senile old buggers who harangues everything in sight, can't remember the names of his grandchildren and is a burden to his friends and family. I'd sooner be shot dead, or ground up into fish food. Even more terrifying is the prospect of Alzheimer's disease, the only form of dementia I truly fear, which will rob me of my precious memories and my formerly reputable vocabulary. That is, I'm sad to admit, the main reason I'm going to such trouble to write in this blog and keep up a daily journal, so when the Alzheimer's hits, I can thumb or click back through the pages and remember all the cool stuff I've seen and done. Call it a fatuous superstition. I may not even remember that I kept a journal when I have Alzheimer's, for all I know. But just in case...
The suspicion that I am gradually turning stupid—or have always been stupid—has been gnawing at me for some time, and is beginning to prey upon my mind and heart. To someone who values intelligence higher than almost anything else in this world or the rest, this new mental trend is anathema—agonizing torment. I've built my reputation and my life on learning, on knowing things nobody else does, on having a tremendous vocabulary, on retaining vital information that will serve me later. And now, it seems, a plug has been pulled somewhere in my brain, and all that which I have mentally striven for is leaking slowly away...or worse, might never have been there in the first place. I am ashamed at my lack of cerebral rectitude, and deathly afraid that my friends and family might find out just what a jumped-up, pretentious nobody I really am—as has already begun to happen with this grammar-quiz game between my friend and me.
I almost wrote "between me and my friend."
I'm doing it again.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
the Pretentious Vaunter
Over the course of the last few years, I've gradually come to suspect something unpleasant about myself that I can't wholly dismiss.
I'm a great deal less intelligent than I like to think.
Want an example? I recently got into a grammar-quiz competition with a college friend. The rules are simple. She sends me, either by e-mail or text message, a word picked at random from a dictionary. If I know the word, I send back the definition. If I don't, I take my best guess. The original purpose of the game, as stated by my friend, is twofold: she gets to be dazzled by my reputedly impressive vocabulary, and she also learns the meaning of a few words herself.
The score currently stands at 1-3. I knew the meaning of one word ("descry") while the definitions of the remaining three words ("foofaraw," "titivate," and "convivial") abjectly defeated me.
As such, this pastime has served a second purpose, likewise twofold: it has simultaneously shown me that I (a) don't have nearly as many words in my vocabulary as I have loudly and proudly proclaimed in the past; and (b) that, while I understand the connotation of many uncommon English words, I am increasingly unable to articulate their literal denotation. There once was a time, back during my homeschooling days, when I could rattle off word definitions like I'd swallowed Merriam and Webster. Now, either because my reading and writing habits have gone into a decline in recent years, or because I have allowed myself to become mentally lazy, or because I drink too much—those days are gone. I forget words I used to know (and cherish) and find it difficult to properly and eloquently verbalize the meanings of others.
In short, I'm a pretender. A fake. A phony. A fraud. A charlatan. I claim to be a wordsmith, a grammarian knowledgeable of bizarre and unusual diction, and yet I'm not. Heck, I only vaguely know the meaning of most of the words I routinely use in conversation or print; I certainly don't understand many of their roots, proper usage, or (as previously mentioned) even their literal definition.
I have forgotten most of what I learned in ground school in the spring of 2008, and with my flight physical (and therefore, my first flying lesson in over 16 months) drawing nearer, I am frantically paging back through all of my pilot's textbooks to try and rebuild the dike. Most of what I read I remember, but had wholly forgotten in the meantime.
Another, more painful example is my recent dismissal from the newspaper I worked at. I simply wasn't intelligent enough to get my mind in gear, learn lessons the first time, quit making stupid and obvious blunders, and write the way I was supposed to write. This is neither the first example of such bumbling idiocy which I have exhibited, nor will it be the last.
This worries me deeply. If my vaunted literary prowess—hell, my mental prowess in general—is crumbling now, what kind of state will it be in when I'm forty? Fifty? Eighty? I don't want to wind up one of those cranky, senile old buggers who harangues everything in sight, can't remember the names of his grandchildren and is a burden to his friends and family. I'd sooner be shot dead, or ground up into fish food. Even more terrifying is the prospect of Alzheimer's disease, the only form of dementia I truly fear, which will rob me of my precious memories and my formerly reputable vocabulary. That is, I'm sad to admit, the main reason I'm going to such trouble to write in this blog and keep up a daily journal, so when the Alzheimer's hits, I can thumb or click back through the pages and remember all the cool stuff I've seen and done. Call it a fatuous superstition. I may not even remember that I kept a journal when I have Alzheimer's, for all I know. But just in case...
The suspicion that I am gradually turning stupid—or have always been stupid—has been gnawing at me for some time, and is beginning to prey upon my mind and heart. To someone who values intelligence higher than almost anything else in this world or the rest, this new mental trend is anathema—agonizing torment. I've built my reputation and my life on learning, on knowing things nobody else does, on having a tremendous vocabulary, on retaining vital information that will serve me later. And now, it seems, a plug has been pulled somewhere in my brain, and all that which I have mentally striven for is leaking slowly away...or worse, might never have been there in the first place. I am ashamed at my lack of cerebral rectitude, and deathly afraid that my friends and family might find out just what a jumped-up, pretentious nobody I really am—as has already begun to happen with this grammar-quiz game between my friend and me.
I almost wrote "between me and my friend."
I'm doing it again.
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6 comments:
Grammar isn't everything. I'm an English teacher, with a Master's degree in English, so I have the authority to say that. And your vocabulary (which is already quite impressive) will grow not diminish with time. Shit - I had to look up "sententious," thank you very much.
Having said all that, let me also say that I understand your fear. I've had episodes of it myself - both the fear of losing my marbles, and the fear that I'm not quite as smart as I thought. It's humbling, shattering even.
But in reality, it's good for the soul. There is intelligence beyond smartness, knowing beyond learning, that I've come to realize is infinitely more valuable than what we normally think of as intelligence. And if learning and smartness don't lead us to this deeper intelligence, or help us express it in some way, I don't see that it's of any ultimate use.
I'm curious - does Alzheimer's run in your family?
Thank you very much for that response. I feel reassured now having been advised by a professional. (That was my intention, by the way...to force people to look stuff up in the dictionary, hee hee hee.)
I suppose I could use a good humbling. I do tend to get on a high horse intellectually, to the degree that I've caught myself looking down on those I perceive as being of lower intelligence. I also think wisdom and worldliness come more from practical experience than intelligence, as you pointed out.
Nope. No history of Alzheimer's in this family as far as I'm aware. Like I said, it's more of a baseless superstition.
I have tendencies toward the same high horse, which, when I was younger, was more like a disfiguring disease. It took me falling flat on my face in life to realize Wow - maybe I'm not the supreme being of the universe after all.
It also began to dawn on me that my education was provided by my parents' money, and my natural intellect was not something I could really take credit for, since I didn't make myself that way, it was just a gift.
And THEN it occurred to me, maybe other people have gifts too that are equally valuable but less recognizable to me because I'm too busy with my head up my ass.
You seem to have much more perspective than I did.
I hope I'm not taking up too much space on your page here, but I just had to share something with you. Last night, I read the next chapter of Bird by Bird, and it just fits this discussion so well. So forgive me for the long (and multiple) comments, but here:
"If you are not careful, station KFKD [K-Fucked] will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one's specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn't do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit, that one doesn't do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on." ~Anne Lamott
Of course you're not taking up space. I value your input. This nubbin was particularly helpful. (You know, I picked "Bird by Bird" up off the shelf when I was in Barnes & Noble over the weekend, and I passed it up in favor of "Manuscript Mania" and "Get Published.")
That Anne Lamott's a sharp cookie. I've heard that voice rapping out of my left speaker, showering every one of those little insecurities upon me (even the ones unconnected to writing). Normally I can ignore him, but every so often, like when I forget to call a girlfriend, reread some particularly hackneyed bit of writing, or (more commonly now) merely meditate upon the premises of this novel series of mine...
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