So smart, yet so dumb.

I remember a few years ago when a friend told me that for someone who was so smart, I was also incredibly dumb. I laughed, as she was right. I am not trying to big note myself here, but I am definitely not stupid. I have a masters degree in law, and a high IQ, but I am also pretty dumb.

There is a difference between stupidity and lacking common sense. The definition of stupidity refers to mental dullness or lacking ordinary quickness. Lacking common sense does not mean that you are stupid just that you do not apply your intelligence appropriately.

While I may be intellectually smart, I am not in the least bit street smart. I have no common sense whatsoever. Get me to figure out a complex maths equation, and I will get to work. Try to get me to figure out how to reignite the pilot light on my hot water system, and I had to call in a plumber. For the life of me, I just could not figure out how to do it. Now, while the plumber, not knowing my achievements in life, could be forgiven for thinking that I am just a dumb blonde (and I am naturally blonde by the way), it is my friends and family that are most astounded by the things that I come up with sometimes.

There was the time when I threw my new red dress in with my sister’s whites. The time I added raising flour to a recipe when it asked for plain flour (which I did not have). The time I decided to refill the ink cartridges on the living room floor (the red ink stains are still on the carpet). How about the time I decided that I wanted to reformat my computer without backing anything up. Or the time I decided it would be quicker to make the dessert by adding the mix to hot water in a cup and then closing the lid and shaking (I still carry the burn marks on my arms), or the time when I put my hand on the hotplate to see if it was on (I had to go to the doctor every day for a week to get it redressed). And these are only the tip of the iceberg. I have done so many dumb things I could not even count them all, let alone remember them.

I can imagine that people who do not know me or who do not know my achievements think that I am not all that clever, but I am not alone. I think that sometimes, smart people tend to live in their own little world, and don’t necessarily think of the consequences. They don’t tend to pay attention to what is around them.

Some people that I know, who never finished school, and who work in supposedly menial jobs are some of the smartest people I know in terms of common sense. They have it, I do not. They think things through before they act. They understand the consequences of their behavior. They do not hide behind their academic genius, but try to learn about things.

I think for a person to be truly smart, they need to have a mixture of both intellectual intelligence and common sense. Without one or the other, a person is stupid. A person cannot have common sense without some semblance of intelligence, but a person with a lot of intelligence does not necessarily have common sense. I am reminded of the words of Mrs Gump “Stupid is, as a stupid does.”