Thoughts on My Imaginary Ethnicity - 6/24/2007 in 2005 - 2007: High School

Another interesting thing about Molly: She had the uncanny ability to realize very unpleasant, very important, completely true things that no one else realized because they were just too unpleasant, important, and true.

One of my favorite movies used to be Real Genius. Real Genius is a comedy made in the eighties about very smart college students being quirky and adorable. They use their knowledge of physics to pull pranks and have awkward love lives and things. I saw it on TV and got really excited about it, and then I watched it again, and then I insisted upon watching it with Molly, and she got really excited about it. Then when we were insisting that Dave had to see it with us too, Molly said, "We like it because it's about who we wish we were."

And my heart sank and I thought, "Oh my God. Exactly." And I didn't like Real Genius as much after that.

You know what was bad for my personal development? Academic decathalon. I don't know why I'm so good at spitting out facts on command, but it's not because I'm a genius. And in middle school, that's what I assumed it was. I also thought that being a genius explained why my emotions had never done the same things as other people's emotions, and why I'd never had many friends, and why the ones I did have I'd never been able to keep for long. "But it's okay!" I thought. "Everything is alright now! I've found the other geniuses, and they are my family, and they understand! I will be able to make friends with them, because they are the same way! And they understand that I am not mean or scary or annoying, just interesting. Aren't geniuses quirky and adorable? We are like our own ethnicity. And we are persecuted! We are misunderstood! People make fun of us and think that we are only useful as calculators and dictionaries! We must stick together. I shall cling to this idea."

Then of course came high school, and this all came crashing down pretty quickly. I started to realize that there seemed to be a lot of people around who were about as smart as me. And a lot of people who were much smarter. And that some of them were pretty cool and pretty normal with a lot of social skills. And nobody was persecuting me anymore for being smart, and nobody was even really setting me apart for being smart. I started to be recognized for my actual achievements rather than for my innate ability, and my actual acheivements weren't that impressive. My imaginary ethnicity went out the window.

Then I saw Real Genius, in which quirky interesting smart people stick together and triumph over people who are trying to treat them like calculators and dictionaries. "My ethnicity does exist!" I thought. "See? This is exactly what I meant!"

But after Molly said what she said, I realized the problem: It's not that this group of people ceased to exist, it's just that I ceased to be a part of it. I no longer deserve to be a part of it. Not me, who took music theory instead of AP physics and failed to build a working circuit in electrical engineering.

Sometimes I am sad about this, and I think, "What happened? Is it just that I am no longer a big fish in a small pond? Or did I actually get dumber? Is that possible?"

But other times I get angry about the whole thing and think, "What's wrong with you? Why the hell does it matter? You're just a person! You're just an individual! You are who you are, whoever that is. Besides, aren't you glad you're no longer treated like a calculator and a dictionary? You pretended not to like being treated like a calculator and a dictionary." When I get angry like this, I am disgusted by things like xkcd, which I started reading regularly to keep up with conversations with Molly and Dave. Whoever writes xkcd clearly defines himself as being part of my imaginary ethnic group. How arrogant is that? And how arrogant was I in middle school? I was an arrogant little shit. Still am, sometimes.

Damn you, Emily Sophrona.

This whole issue is going to get infinitely worse when I go to college. There aren't dumb people at Graham. Um... Actually... I might be one of the dumb people at Graham.

So I guess I will just have to try extra hard to take Amanda Gilford's advice.

Maybe I should actually write something back to her. You know, just so she knows I didn't die in a car crash on prom night.

I know where I'm going to live at Graham now. I got a single. (woo.) I'm in an all female dorm. (woo?) My room number has four digits. Four.