Name Dropping

Not smart enough is what my mother told me when I seemed unable to look numbers up in the six inch phone-book. Perhaps, alphabetic wasn’t my strong suit? And, my Japanese friend, last name Muramoto, was always depended upon to figure out the busing schedule--though I never felt afraid to ride into the city, side by side strangers with foreign and hard to spell surnames.

Mother gave us vocabulary tests as children, new words scotch-taped to the fridge each week, whomever scored the highest got a malt from Polar Queen.

I was in the young mother’s class, for those who became knocked-up during high school. Glad to be back if only on Tuesday evenings with lessons on how to buy the best pearls, or this advice: If your husband comes home from work and you haven’t started dinner yet, then hurry and start frying onions, he’ll know by the smell supper is on its way!

I listened to boxed collections of classical music, records never checked from the high school library, Strauss and Tchaikovshy, and pencil and washed a couple of bird drawings in order to get an art credit.

I read and reported on books of my choice, The Drifters by Michener, but really, I never learned math and so when I finally got to college and took a placement test, I was right on the borderline of having to take a refresher retard-math or college algebra.

I did sign up for the tougher, but the last day to drop arrived and I walked slowly down to the registrar with a beefy football player (I can’t remember his name) who’d also been excused for having taken a wayward path. Clearly, the language of science and its precise memorized moves also a mental knot for me.

Always, the question of whether I am smart enough, or not, has thorn-in-my-side attacked, the cliché psychological triggers of me, a part developed to cover what I was afraid others might discover, I’m really just not that bright.

I remember a face, but not a name and at parties when the Seattle elitist gathered to surmise who was cool by method of naming, Which books are you reading?, Which musicians do you follow?, I said I’d never heard of a band when cornered, but back in the car discovered that group I said I didn’t know was written across my favorite disc—if only I’d bothered to remember the name!

Photo credit: