Intellectual Ditz
One day while I was sitting at a table in my university’s student union trying to read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a fellow environmental biology classmate came over and introduced himself. It was hard to miss how tall, good-looking, and well-dressed he was–the distinct opposite of me. The crazy thing was, about a month prior to this meeting, I had broken my wire-framed glasses and had literally taped the earpiece onto the frames with black electrical tape. My long hair was in two braids hanging down my plaid flannel shirt, topped off with a bandana spread over my head and tied at the back of my neck. No makeup, ragged jeans, and hiking boots completed my “rebellious” fashion statement. I wouldn’t have come over and talked to me.
He sat down and we began talking about our class, the book, our majors, and environmental issues. I soon found out he had already noticed me in the massive lecture hall and labeled me as being an “environmentalist” and an “intellectual.” When he walked past my table that day in the union and saw me reading one of his favorite books, he said he had to stop and talk. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was reading the same page over and over, because it was too deep and too boring–I just couldn’t focus on it (the book still sits on my bookshelf, unread). We did become fast friends, study buddies, hiking partners, and several years later he was present at my wedding. I had never been pre-selected as a friend before or have never since, to my knowledge, based solely on looking “smart.”
What I felt on the inside was that I might be a bimbo–a real ditz–a fraud, and I could never let my guard down or my secret out. I didn’t always have a pleasant childhood and I was an angry teenager, especially at home. I rarely found anything my parents said or did, funny. I suppose I purposely shut down my “funny bone”. I never felt I could trust whether something was truly funny or not. Isn’t that weird? So I was pretty reserved when it came to laughing. I was extremely self-conscious about the sound of my own laughter.
Many years passed before I was able to appreciate the real value of humor; self-deprecating humor. It is my favorite. I’d much rather tell true stories about stupid things I’ve done than make fun of someone else. Except making fun of my family and friends. That is all-inclusive in my definition of “self”-deprecating. The problem with waiting so late in life to develop a sense of humor is that I forget some of the gems over the years that I’d pay good money to go back and remember and be able to write about.
Just this morning, we attended a pancake breakfast sponsored by our high school juniors. After eating and talking to several people we hadn’t seen in a while, Jim and I headed for the door. One of the teachers seated with her family, hollered to me that I had forgotten my purse. As I walked toward her, I said, “I would have remembered when I got out to the car and didn’t have my keys.”
“Not if I had taken it first!”
We both got tickled and remembered when trying to leave in my car was an issue from another day. I knew she would tell her family the story when I left, so I suggested she go ahead and tell it so I would know if she embellished it or not:
“We’d had a teacher’s meeting, and as some of us went out the back door to the parking lot, Carla was looking around for her car. We all saw it right there. She looked around, and went off in the opposite direction. As we all reached our cars, we heard the “beep, beep” of her remote!”
Yes, the car was two rows in front of us. Never mind there were only two and a half rows of a total of twenty cars that could fit into that dinky parking lot. I wanted to tell her I was probably trying to solve half of the world’s problems that day, but I’m afraid she knows me better than that. I also know the cameras trained on that lot would have given away the puzzled look on my face.
Thank goodness there were no cameras in the parking lot when a similar shining moment occurred, or I probably would have had my proverbial 15 seconds of fame, on some World’s Most Stupid Videos show. It was the mid-eighties and I had parked my car at that same university as in the first story. As soon as I locked and slammed the door, I knew I had locked my keys in the ignition. Sure enough, they were dangling from the steering column. I pretended nothing had really happened, and went into the records office–who knew–maybe if enough time passed, I would eventually walk out to the car and the keys would be back in my pocket. After an hour in the building, I broke down and called campus security to come rescue me. The dispatcher took my name, location, make, model, and license plate number of the car. When I walked out to the car and waited for the officer with a Slim-Jim to arrive, I decided to look at all four doors to make sure I had indeed locked myself out. . .well, of course, I hadn’t. One of the back doors was unlocked. With the police car to arrive at anytime, I had to put my overeducated brain to work and instantaneously assess the situation:
1) I could stand there and tell the officer thank you for coming, but I don’t need you anymore (too incompetent to drive, if I couldn’t even think to look at all four doors before calling security);
2) I could stand there and act oblivious to the fact one of the doors was unlocked (incompetent AND a bimbo with a questionable IQ–and what was I doing on a university campus anyway?);
3) I could jump in my car and get the heck out of Dodge (could I be arrested for making a false report; after all, they had my name and license number);
4) I could really put my college education to work for me and do what I ended up doing (and not look like too much of a ditz)–quickly open the unlocked door, push the lock down, slam the door, stand there like my keys had been locked inside the whole time, and watch the nice officer fumble with the Slim-Jim, ignoring any emergency calls as I wasted his time. No one was the wiser. Except me; I became wiser for doing it and learned a big lesson: I would never lock my keys in my car again.
I was told once by my Sunday school teacher, that while I could write wonderfully funny stories, I was so different in person–I don’t really come off as being funny at all. Was this a compliment? This cracked me up. I laughed so hard, I had to drive over to his house and hear it again. I really can’t disagree with him, because I had worked hard all my life at not coming off as that ditzy bimbo.
Yes, I am a ditz and yes, I may be halfway intelligent, but the real test is when I can write about both, laugh at myself and have the guts to share it with the world. Isn’t it? Hmmm, maybe it isn’t.
“No Chief (of police), the day you drove me home in the caged back seat of your squad car from Casey’s to get my extra set of keys, I had NOT locked any doors on purpose. I promise.”
