Lackadaisical

I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine about how both of us would love to go back to school and get another degree or advanced degree, but it’s merely a dream for both of us since neither one of us has disposable income to go back to school. We have film degrees and merely having a bachelors in film makes us both feel dumb. At least with advanced degrees we can pretend to be academics and feel as if we have a little more weight to throw around, that we can actually read dense scholarly articles on Zulawski and know more than the French phrase, mise en scene.

I’ve always had this weird hang up on my intelligence, it stems from early childhood when my brother was constantly glorified for being a book worm, a great test taker, and had the opportunity to skip a grade. My parents placed their bets on the kid who they were certain had a future. I’m sure they were horrified when the other kid (me) didn’t learn to talk until the age of four, speaking gibberish to no one, and was constantly naked—I guess some things never change. What would they do with me? They probably hoped I’d marry rich and get by that way.

Needless to say I get so weird and insecure when I’m around actual smart people, like people who went to school to actually DO something, not pick their nose, speak in a nasally tone about pre-code Hollywood films, pretending that there is some sort of intellectualism involved with film. My infatuation with a man who went to school twice for careers in engineering and law, with a vocabulary as expansive as the Pacific Ocean, and reads more books in a month than I have in the last five years, makes me feel so dumb, No wonder he ignores me, I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either. He probably has interesting discussions with a pretty, young woman who can keep up with all the pithy discussions on Salman Rushdie or Margaret Atwood over Negronis in a jazz club. Together, they read 1,000 page books on economics in cozy bars, intimately talking about the downfall of cryptocurrency as they gaze into each other’s eyes. All it does is make me wonder why he spent so much time hanging out with me years and years ago. I’m sure the beers we drank together made it easier for him to get through those evenings. Anything sounds half way decent when you have some alcohol coursing through your body in a dimly lit bar.

The attraction I have towards smart men is part attraction and maybe part jealousy. I know I’ll never be that smart—I failed every AP test I took, I can’t recall my SAT score but I distinctly remember it wasn’t good, I went to a state school but not before fucking around in community college for four years. I’m a slacker who never tried hard in school but managed to pass when I needed to. I could have spent more time studying or trying to grow some brains, but I always found my head in the clouds, daydreaming about everything and nothing, wondering if whatever path I chose I’d find some semblance of happiness.