I hate Mensa, have since I was a kid. They're pretentious and downright arrogant with their little smart club, their treehouse in the backyard with a sign on the door saying "Averageness Prohibited". This opinion was directly passed down to me by my mother, who probably got it from her mother and so on, an opinion heirloom. I think I would have rather had a brooch. Somewhere way back in my family history, someone failed the Mensa membership test, and we've all been very bitter since.
I poke around the website because there are games. I soon get tired of the Hangman game that just could not be won. I read the "Benefits of Membership" section and am tempted to try and join, but decide that I am too chicken and would rather sit in the sandbox making fun of those in the treehouse with the rest of the idiots. Then I look at the profiles of famouse members, like the inventor of Skyy vodka and Geena Davis. My eyes catch the name of Marilyn Vos Savant.
My feelings on this woman are decidedly hypocritical. Of course I am jealous. I am jealous of anything and everything I suspect is or has something better. You'll say it's because I'm a Scorpio; I say it's because everyone in my family was raised with the belief that they were the best, along with strong feelings regarding Mensa.
But anyway, for the uninformed, the woman has the highest recorded IQ. She has this amazing intelligence, given to her by God to save the world by doing really complex math equations or inventing a new machine or thinking up fabulous new philosophies.
So naturally she writes a weekly column in Parade magazine, educating the merely "above average" folks like us about the buoyancy properties of bowling balls. Go ahead, I dare you to look up her most recent entry and see if it's not about bowling balls being thrown in a lake.
I don't flatter myself that she hasn't thought of this, that someone else hasn't already written her, saying, "Hey lady, my brother has cancer. Couldn't you take a couple weeks off from the column and think up a cure?" I wonder how she doesn't go crazy, wanting to make more of an impact on the world than just telling us all about Archimedes' Principle. Even I, a Forrest Gump compared to her, get so frustrated and trapped, thinking to my arrogant self, why am I not more than this? How is that column, nationally syndicated though it may be, Enough for her?
In all fairness, it's possible that she is more active than I realize - my research is admittedly limited. Maybe she doesn't have a big ego that tells her she could be doing more than this, though I say if anyone has a right to be a little full of herself, she can go for it. Maybe she knows something I don't (not much of a maybe there, eh?). Maybe she's done the math and found out that the biggest impact is made one reader at a time. Maybe this is what makes her happy. Maybe there's just a lot that I don't understand.
Truth be told, I think a permanently reserved writing space in Parade magazine and the admiration of thousands would be Enough for me. Those are heights I will probably never see, and most of the time, I'm okay with that. I feel like I have a purpose, and it is only occasionally that I wish for a loftier one.
I'm not sure what conclusion I've come to here, of course other than that, once again, I don't know everything or even much of anything. I attack her out of my own frustration of not having her gifts and not feeling like I'm making the most of my own. So as long as Parade magazine makes her happy, I say Marilyn can write about bowling balls as long as she pleases. That is my conclusion.
I'm sure she's terribly relieved.
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