You know, I’m an intelligent person. I am. I have a college degree (with honors, thank you very much) to prove it. Moreoever, I am Very Nearly finished with a masters degree from Duke University. One has to have some kind of intelligence, doesn’t one? to be able to make those claims.
What’s weird about those facts is that, where we live, they don’t mean much. Everyone around here, and I mean Everyone, has a college degree and probably a Masters. Many, many, Many people have PhD’s, and some are here just to get their post-doc, something I’d never even heard of until we’d lived here for about four years. At one point, I heard (and this may still be true) that this area, the one where we live, has the highest PhD per capita in the world. Impressive.
It’s hard, in that context, to feel that one is intelligent. Difficult to believe that one measures up. That, despite the fact that one only has a Bachelor’s degree and teaches high school English, one is Smart.
And then you end up at social gatherings in conversations where everyone is discussing inflation rates and economic theory or the upcoming election and political theory or a Supreme Court decision and landmark cases, and you realize with a sinking feeling that you are not following the conversation At All.
Maybe not so smart, you are thinking to yourself, and you head over to the punch bowl.
Then, a few years ago, I was sitting with some friends while our children played around our ankles, and there was a conversation about Intelligence Theory. It turns out that there are Different Kinds of Intelligence. So where a person might just be a whiz at math, he might have little to no comprehension or appreciation of history. This made sense to me. I had seen this kind of thing many times when I was teaching, but somehow the concept hadn’t translated itself for me into the adult world. What it meant was that I might be smart, but maybe especially in English, or language, or something like that. This was a welcome adjustment to my thirty-something psyche.
And Then, a few months after that, I started a Masters program at Duke, and was suddenly in a room full of people discussing literary theory and feminist theory, Foucault and Lacan and yes, it must be admitted, Freud. And I was able to Follow the conversation, and Contribute and, morever, Apply What I Had Learned. Ha! Who knew?? Guess I’m pretty smart after all.
Now when I’m in a conversation about mortgages and inflation and No One seems interested in discussing, say, the impact of Darwinism on the work of George Eliot, do I feel Inferior? No. My, no. I feel Sorry for them. Fools.
Yes, languages, literature, words. This is the arena for my mind, the place where my brain flexes its grey matter.
In that context you would think, wouldn’t you?, that a good game of Boggle would be right up my alley.
Well, let me just say that we went to the charming cottage of the phattedcalf and his Rachel last night to play this game. Yes we did. And I lost. Soundly. My proverbial butt was whipped.
My husband is a great Boggle player. Really, really great. Where I’m thrilled to find four and five letter words, he pulls out things like voyeur and perspicacity.
And now, after last night, I know that the phattedcalf himself is also a Stellar Boggle Player. Absolutely Stellar.
Of course the problem with Boggle is that one’s success is cancelled out by the equal success of others. Which I suppose is true in any competition, But Still. It is Just Great to discover, in that random mix of letters, the words beers, bier, brie and lutes, but it is Such A Drag when everyone else has found them too. There is no triumph in that. No pleasure. You might as well leave off writing those down.
But what people like Bill and the phattedcalf can do and Rachel, to be sure, is find Other Things. They are looking all over the place, circling around letters, making- as, indeed, you are supposed to do when playing Boggle- letters follow all kinds of crazy paths in order to create a word. I was so pleased– So Pleased– to find the word alarms. But of course the phattedcalf had found that, too. And smudge, And friction, And notary.
For my part, I was over on the other side of the box trying with all my might to make two o’s, two i’s, and one n spell onion. They won’t do it. Ever. And neither– and this is for future reference, so make a mental note– will geir make geiser, no matter what their configuration. You have Absolutely Got To Have that s. And another e.
What was my problem last night? Was my brain just dead? I had done yard work for the better part of the day; was my brain fried in the sun? No. I told them all (you’d better believe it) that only the day before (Only The Day Before) I had written three really really really great pages in the last chapter of my book. Single spaced. Three. I had read them aloud to Bill, and he said they were great. Really great. He doesn’t always say that. Not like he did that time.
I was thrilled when I found doily. I didn’t think the guys would find that one. Maybe Rachel, but the guys can’t even be sure what a doily is. But no, they found it. Both of them, and Rachel. And Nat found manx. Hello? What is a manx? Well, it’s a kind of cat. Look it up. We did.
Happily– and I told them this at the outset, even as the men’s competitive engines were beginning to rev over the little hourglass timer– my self-worth wasn’t even remotely tied into the outcome of that game. Not Even Remotely.
But when, at the end of the first round, Rachel had a score of 8 and Bill and the phattedcalf were in the teens and I had 1 (one) (for the word wavy— I can’t believe they didn’t see that!), I said something. I can’t remember what it was now, but it was something about what they have as opposed to what I have, and by this I didn’t mean score, but something more along the lines of the lasting satisfaction I get from words and language and putting them together to Say Something. And Rachel, dear Rachel said, even as we were all scanning the cubes once again, pens to paper, sand running through the hourglass– Rachel said, “And what you have is much better.”
She is so dear.
And I’d like to think she’s right. We’d all like to think that, wouldn’t we?
