The Curse In The Blessing

THE CURSE IN THE BLESSING

by

Anthonystjoseph

     I had always been told how smart I was as a child and never really paid too much attention to it…  I guess I was always too busy paying attention to the people who were saying it and not what they were actually saying.  It wasn’t until my grandmother’s funeral that I learned that she had taken me, as a young child, to be tested where they determined that I had a high IQ and recommended I attend a special school.  I still didn’t recognize the scope of this even when an IQ test I took online as an adult said unbelievable things…  I was familiar with the academic praise when in the Army I was pulled aside and told the computer that I took my ASVAB Aptitude test on indicated I should apply to West Point’s Preparatory Academy…

     All this talk about intelligence never really fazed me because my brain was always too busy with other things…  As a matter of FACT, I will tell you this, I NEVER read one book until I was in the US Army and I read that out of boredom.  National Honor Society, Arizona Boys State, and even an appointment to West Point were all achieved without ever fully reading ONE BOOK!  I had never even read a ‘See Jane Run’ book…  My mother didn’t read me stories or buy me books…  She just sat me in front of the television and I loved it.  Whenever a book report or something of that nature was due I just gave it a simple scan the night before and did my report and that’s the truth.

     So I am very thankful to the author and her book that got me started reading ferociously in the army and I haven’t stopped since…  Books are awesome and I sometimes deeply wish I had met them earlier in my life.  I found that books could catapult me from any place I happened to be to any place that I wanted to be, and some places I didn’t want to be but still felt compelled just for the discovery aspect.  I was in love with being catapulted to different places and transported to different times.  The process of reading to me was nothing short of magic.  No one had told me, no one had shown me; the magic of books until that time, had been a secret.

     So whenever I come up for air from a book, I am completely grounded back in the real world with the people who have always caused me consternation, ‘the slow ones’.  It seems that with the higher intelligence comes a higher awareness and a completely higher level of sentience.  Sometimes I am dumbfounded by the stupidity that is standing in front of me and presenting itself as an equal.  It sometimes actually appears to me that you all even move slower than I do…  I am at a complete loss sometimes as to what appears to me to be idiotic behavior…

     I got questions; let’s get into some questions, random questions…  We’ll keep it simple.  Who goes into McDonald’s and stares at the menu for five minutes with an open mouth of ‘what do I want’.  THE CHOICES ARE ALWAYS THE SAME!  When you got into your car to go to McDonalds shouldn’t you have known then what you were going to get?  How about the drive TOO McDonalds; didn’t it occur to you at any time during that ‘drive’ to think about what you wanted of the same old menu.  These little things drive me crazy and believe me I know it’s ‘my crazy’ because I think you folks are different.

     I usually try to remind myself of something that I have worked out to help me deal and understand my personal situation.  I have come to realize that this planet is a school and we are not all in the same grade…  I am in school with some first graders and second graders and a very small group of high schoolers that I look up too.  When I’m at a four way Stop Sign in the desert and someone stops in front of me and looks for cars for a whole minute when there are clearly NO cars coming from any direction in this desert, I calm myself down.  I calm myself down by telling myself, “Tony, this is a first grader, they haven’t learned that cars are not invisible so they are taking extra time to look for the INVISIBLE CARS!”  And then I lose it, HONK, HONK, HONK, “WOULD YOU PLEASE GO!  THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS INVISIBLE CARS LADY!  GO!!!”

     So when they say, ‘there is a curse with every blessing and a blessing with every curse’, I know what they are talking about.  I am blessed with the intelligence to KNOW that I am going to McDonald’s and the ability to remember their menu and think what I want, and cursed to be standing behind someone who doesn’t.  I am blessed with the ability to know that there is no such thing as an invisible car and cursed to be waiting behind someone who doesn’t…  I am blessed and I am cursed, just an example of more of God’s handy work.

By

Anthonystjoseph

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