I was what you might call a gifted child when I was younger. I was smart by school standards. Got good grades. Learning and understanding lessons and studying came pretty easy for me (except for math; that came with more frustration, but I still ended up being pretty good at it). I ended up getting to do a couple of summers of gifted summer school when I was in grade school and in junior high, I was invited to a gifted science camp for a week (where I spent most of it sick thanks to one of the girls I bunked with). I took Honors English in high school and my algebra teacher wanted me in his advanced class, but my parents, who’d tapped out of helping me with my math homework when I was in sixth grade, wisely decided against this. I probably would have thrown my book through the closet door in one of my fits of frustration due to not being able to instantly understand how a math problem worked.
That was another thing. I felt like (and still do feel like) I should know how to do everything. I should automatically know how to do something. When I was three, my mother founding me crying in the closet with this big ol’ adult book on my lap, mad because I couldn’t read it. In my tiny little head, I thought that I should have just known how to do that. I learned to read and write shortly after that, which started a trend of me learning things quickly and sometimes, learning things on my own. It seemed like you didn’t have to teach me anything because I already knew or I would just figure it out.
As it turns out, this is not a great life plan.
Because I was “gifted” in the academic sense, it was just sort of assumed that I knew what I was doing or that I would figure it out in the rest of my life. Nobody needed to guide me into adulthood. After all, I’d been an “old soul” my whole life.
So, here’s the thing.
As it turns out, in my case, doing well academically doesn’t necessarily translate to being smart in life.
Believe me when I say that you underestimate my ability to be a disaster.
I realize the confusion about this because I’m very good at presenting the illusion that I know what I’m doing. I’ve always been very good in my day jobs because I’m very good at learning things and completing tasks and meeting deadlines and knowing my shit. And when it comes to my creative work, again, it’s a matter of learning new things, completing tasks, and meeting deadlines.
But.
Left to my own devices when it comes to being a functioning adult, I have a tendency to wander into traffic and narrowly avoid being flattened by semis. I have a gift for making questionable life choices that typically do not turn out well, but not so badly that it totally fucks shit up. They’re just bad enough that the people in my immediate vicinity might question why someone thought to be so smart is doing something so less-than-smart.
Which is another funny thing. Either people are so convinced of my intelligence that they just figure I have a plan and those questionable decisions are just part of that and/or it’s not my bad decision-making that created this disaster, it’s just that this choice didn’t work out/was something else’s fault/bad luck.
Or, it’s just so awkward that someone once perceived as gifted is making such bad life choices and they don’t want to say anything.
Probably the latter.
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