Big Head, Small Brain

It's been a constant fear of mine for many years now that I'm actually a total idiot.

It has even been confirmed to me by others on quite a few occasions. Whether it's been dressed up as retard, tool, doofus, spazz or just plan idiot, I'm no stranger to the feeling of intellectual inferiority.

It sometimes feels like I missed out on a class where a whole heap of important things were explained to everyone. The ins and outs of various wars, political conflicts, geographical locations, medical terminology, you name it and they all know more about it than me.

I'm 25 now so I feel like I should have amassed a relatively strong knowledge of the world around me but I'm still desperately lacking. I'm losing the few shreds of information left of my university degree and instead my mind harvests anecdotes about the production of The Thing or the names of Jordan's kids. It's depressing.

This descent into total idiocy was highlighted earlier this year on a first date. It had been relatively successful for the most part; a walk in the park, a drink at a pub, a meal at an Italian etc. After we finished eating, we headed back to his place to watch TV (no, really) and encountered his housemate. A number of jokes had been made throughout about the 8-year age gap between the two of us. This made him 32 by the way, not 16. I was therefore, determined to show that maturity didn't have to be measured purely by age.

We had been chatting about the Italian restaurant and the fact that it was owned by a local businessman, who also owned a few other eateries. While talking to his housemate, she made a comment about Berlusconi. I responded by saying 'Is that the guy who owns those restaurants?', to which she replied 'No, he's the Prime Minister of Italy'. Also worth noting that she worked for the Foreign Office - great. We made it to a second date but it all sort of fizzled out rather quickly...

Now, of course I know that he is who he is but my stupid, date-ruining brain clearly doesn't have the speed or agility to work it out in time. I often wonder why I'm so poorly trained. What the fuck was I doing at school, other than getting hit in the head with footballs and re-arranging my locker to look busy at lunchtimes? Maybe I should go back or maybe I should have never left, like Screech or that paedophile who got arrested for pretending he was 16.

I'm sick of being caught in conversations where I spend the duration panicking about how I'm going to respond. As well as being borderline retarded, I'm also terribly traveled. When people start vocally masturbating about how 'like totally amazing' Thailand is, I have to pray that no one asks for my opinion. All I can offer is how I generally prefer green thai curry to red.

Is everyone else really that much smarter and more developed than I am? Or is everyone else living on the edge as well, hoping that they won't be found out? I have this terrible knack of assuming others are infinitely more well-rounded and adjusted than I am but what if I'm not the only one who thinks like that?

I think the solution might be for me to spend more time around dumb people. People dumber than me. People who refer to words with three syllables as 'long'. People who watch Most Haunted, without irony. People who would make me feel better about myself.

I could impress them with my historical knowledge (that I learnt from movies), tell them about the time I went to a museum or brag about the tens of books I own. Maybe I'm not the stupid one, everyone else is just too fucking smart for their own good.

To quote my favourite dead person ever Richard Yates...

"I like being "born yesterday," because it gives me a pretty good chance of being alive tomorrow, when everybody else is dead"