Case
Well-known member
I have always been labeled as "different."
It all started when teachers began to tell me that I was smart. I got tested with a high IQ at an early age, and so teachers placed me in a class for "smart people." It was not fun. I didn't want to be different. All I wanted was to be was normal. Plus, my shyness made me petrified of the special attention I was getting. This whole situation bothered me so much as a child that I rebelled. I quit their classes, and I retreated back to the "normal" classes with my friends.
Occasionally, I remember feeling loneliness as a child, and so my Mom would try to comfort me by telling me how special I was. She would attempt to tell me my IQ number, but every time she tried this, I stopped her. I didn't want to have that ******* number floating around in my head as some kind of barometer to compare myself to others. That's what my sister did, and I wanted none of that.
I never wanted to join MENSA, win spelling bees, or even tell anyone I was smart. In fact, all I wanted to do was hide in anonymity. I didn't want to be noticed, really. I was never ashamed of being smart, but the last thing I wanted was the attention it brought me. The more attention I got, the more I wanted to run away from it.
My Mom seemed sad that I didn't want to know my IQ. Somehow, she felt that I would have been happier if I knew just how smart I was on those tests. I can't for the life of me grasp any possible scenario where knowing that number would have made any difference in my life. Since my sister bragged constantly about her number, I found that to be quite obnoxious, and that further distancing me from my family.
I also found out that my brother had developed a complex about my IQ test. He once told me that he was jealous of me for having scored high, and it made him feel like the stupid one in the family. I never felt this way about him at all. In fact, in many ways, he may be smarter. He has certainly figured out life better than I have. But, it was not a happy day when I learned that my IQ score had been a source of grief for both me and my brother.
Anyway, now my Mom is dead, so I will never know that number. But it's funny that I still think about it. I still wonder if that was the right thing to do, not knowing the number on a test... Normally, I hate not knowing information because I'm an information junkie. But I figure that I already knew that I was smart, so was the exact number really necessary? Being smart is more than a number, anyway. It's no blessing, either. Nor is it a guarantee of happiness. It's more annoying than helpful. My intelligence never helped me be closer to my Dad, or fix my marriage, or keep my family together, or get a career I could be proud of. Sometimes no matter how smart you are, things just don't work out.
Knowing that number doesn't change the fact that I am occasionally awkward, asocial, lost, and still struggling to have a happy life.
It all started when teachers began to tell me that I was smart. I got tested with a high IQ at an early age, and so teachers placed me in a class for "smart people." It was not fun. I didn't want to be different. All I wanted was to be was normal. Plus, my shyness made me petrified of the special attention I was getting. This whole situation bothered me so much as a child that I rebelled. I quit their classes, and I retreated back to the "normal" classes with my friends.
Occasionally, I remember feeling loneliness as a child, and so my Mom would try to comfort me by telling me how special I was. She would attempt to tell me my IQ number, but every time she tried this, I stopped her. I didn't want to have that ******* number floating around in my head as some kind of barometer to compare myself to others. That's what my sister did, and I wanted none of that.
I never wanted to join MENSA, win spelling bees, or even tell anyone I was smart. In fact, all I wanted to do was hide in anonymity. I didn't want to be noticed, really. I was never ashamed of being smart, but the last thing I wanted was the attention it brought me. The more attention I got, the more I wanted to run away from it.
My Mom seemed sad that I didn't want to know my IQ. Somehow, she felt that I would have been happier if I knew just how smart I was on those tests. I can't for the life of me grasp any possible scenario where knowing that number would have made any difference in my life. Since my sister bragged constantly about her number, I found that to be quite obnoxious, and that further distancing me from my family.
I also found out that my brother had developed a complex about my IQ test. He once told me that he was jealous of me for having scored high, and it made him feel like the stupid one in the family. I never felt this way about him at all. In fact, in many ways, he may be smarter. He has certainly figured out life better than I have. But, it was not a happy day when I learned that my IQ score had been a source of grief for both me and my brother.
Anyway, now my Mom is dead, so I will never know that number. But it's funny that I still think about it. I still wonder if that was the right thing to do, not knowing the number on a test... Normally, I hate not knowing information because I'm an information junkie. But I figure that I already knew that I was smart, so was the exact number really necessary? Being smart is more than a number, anyway. It's no blessing, either. Nor is it a guarantee of happiness. It's more annoying than helpful. My intelligence never helped me be closer to my Dad, or fix my marriage, or keep my family together, or get a career I could be proud of. Sometimes no matter how smart you are, things just don't work out.
Knowing that number doesn't change the fact that I am occasionally awkward, asocial, lost, and still struggling to have a happy life.
