People often ask me how I got to be so smart. That’s why I carry a briefcase full of photocopies of the second chapter of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Wise,” his last moment of lucidity before the spirochetes churned his brain to butter. I let Nietzsche do my talking for me since I’m usually too busy philosophizing to answer people’s questions.
For example, just yesterday at the café I was lecturing a peasant on how best to raise his unruly children, whose horseplay was disturbing my moment of intense contemplation (whether to have crumb cake or lemon poppy seed loaf). The dim fellow asked me, “What makes you so goddamn smart, asshole?” At which point I plucked Nietzsche out of my satchel and said, “So glad you asked, dear man. Here, read this!” He mentioned something about joining him outside, perhaps for an al fresco reading, but I had already returned to my lofty meditations.
Of course, I’ve never read Nietzsche. I wouldn’t want to contaminate the originality of my ideas. But I’m confident we’re on the same page, since Nietzsche, like me, was a misunderstood genius. Contrary to what most people think, being a misunderstood genius is not all free meals and hot oil rubdowns. Normally, I would just hand you the Nietzsche printout to explain my point, but I’ve run out of copies and Kinko’s has banned me from all California locations for Xeroxing my anus one too many times. So now I shall condescend to you, public, to share the plight of my prodigious intelligence.
I was bred to be a genius. That’s why my parents named me P.G.–Pure Genius. Well, technically, I was christened as Ralph. But after a year of witnessing my superior mind, and from the stories they tell, my amazing talent for eating nails, rubber bands and other household detritus, Mom and Dad had it legally changed. This new name was, for them, an endless source of pride and enjoyment. “Hey, Pure Genius,” they would shout, “Come open Daddy’s beer with your teeth.” Or, “Pure Genius, I bet you can’t drink a whole jug of anti-freeze.” Given my precocious intellect, I instantly mastered such activities.
The trouble started when I came of schooling age. Unlike my parents, who accepted my talents as a natural emanation of their own brilliance, the base and conformist world tried to break me. An incompetent doctor diagnosed me as a low-grade cretin. Clearly, the man could not see past superficial appearances, basing his diagnosis solely on my goiter, my lucky propeller beanie and my sardine-can shoes.
Back in those days, they tried to cure cretinism with corporal punishment. Here again, my learning prowess was apparent, as I quickly mastered how to take a lashing like a veteran sailor. I absorbed blows with the same zest I had for absorbing vocabulary words. Some geniuses, the slower ones, read widely; I read the thesaurus. It had all the good words in it, as well as the high quality, excellent, first-class, virtuous, noble, satisfactory and advantageous words. Pretty soon, I had traded up my vulgar colloquialisms for a mellifluous lexical arsenal, spoken in a cheeky East Midland accent. Needless to say, this led to only more beatings. At the age of 16, I decided to leave the third grade and light out on my own intrepid quest for knowledge.
After years of wandering, I arrived at Harvard. I had followed a frail-looking old man from the bus station onto campus, hoping to overcome him with my intellect and steal his wallet. But he was not as weak as he looked, and after considerable tussle, I retracted my claim to mental superiority and limped away. Nursing my wounds, I had a revelation. This man must be a genius, too. That was the only possible way he could have out-wrestled me. I realized this was where I belonged.
The Harvard admission director seemed shocked when I made my customary offer of sexual favors. I explained to him that this was how I had risen through the ranks of the merchant marines, how I had traveled the world and how I opened my first checking account.
“But anyone can open a checking account,” he said.
Flustered by this affront to my intelligence, I frantically displayed further evidence of my genius. I recited the thesaurus. I drew a really cool, but scary clown. I even strapped on my sardine cans and did a shuffle. Again, my genius went unrecognized.
So I came to Stanford. Here, I decided to forego the whole admission process. Instead, I have erected a perfectly habitable ivory tower of my own made from driftwood and coffee cups, right next to the Hoover Institute. It’s a one-man think tank called the P.G. Institute, and it’s open for business. Current projects include publishing an “Idiot’s Guide to Understanding My Genius in Three Easy Steps” and trying to recruit Condi Rice to come for a yearlong fellowship.
No comments:
Post a Comment