This blog shall serve as a proem to another blog in which I write about my fear of being very stupid. Proof of how silly I'm getting with this blogging stuff: writing an introduction to a blog to be written later. For now I'm just compiling a list of unforgettably stupid Brooke moments:
*The time when I was a kid and my dad told me, because I'd asked, that his IQ was around 150 and that this was no big deal. And then later that year when Dan Quayle became vice-president and Roy railed at his face speaking to us from the television, and I said loudly in order to impress my dad, "Dan Quayle is so stupid his IQ is probably like the same as mine, like 130." And Roy had to correct me and say that would mean he's actually kinda smart, actually way above average.
*The time when I was an even younger kid and my mom was driving me to school, and to impress her I said something I'd heard adults say a lot, but twisted it to fit my meaning. We were talking about my step-sister Dezi, who had yet again failed some 2+2 test, and in order to underscore how undeniably smarter I was than her, I said, "Ah, she always ceases to amaze me." I said "always" because I thought this would mean that she amazed me over and over again. I'd been thinking all my life when people said, "She never ceases to amaze me" that they meant the subject in question never amazed the speaker. I was totally ignorant that the word cease meant something. My mom explained this to me and, red-faced, I slammed the door on her as she blew me a kiss goodbye when we reached the school parking lot.
*The other time when I was a kid and my first stepdad kept calling me a prima donna when he'd fight with my mom and I wondered how he knew something so deep-seated about me because I'd been secretly dancing to Madonna's music alone in my room, and quietly, for years. So then I would call friends at school a prima donna if they liked her music. When I discovered the dictionary in high school I was mortified.
*The time a few weeks ago when I attempted to teach my Brit lit students some god-forsaken text and I said Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England was very, I repeat, very important in the understanding of it, and a student asked what "ecclesiastical" meant. And I paused and had a tremendous out-of-body experience, as I usually do when something goes wrong in class, and instead of asking the students for help and saying something smart like "we have to share the responsibility of knowledge in this classroom," etc., I said before I returned back to my body, "Ecclesiastical means 'definitive,' 'all-encompassing.'" Which of course is wrong. And I had to email them later that day to admit my stupidity.
This list should be much, much longer, but I've got two texts to read for tomorrow and thus must try to work to get smarter rather than revel in these duller moments. Hopefully even when I'm dumb I'm still fun, though. That's my big wish for myself and loved ones.
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