A Lesson Learned

I am -- and let me be very clear about this -- an idiot.

Oh, sure, I scored in the 95th percentile on the ACT. And I can offer at least one intelligent contribution to a conversation on just about anything. I can explain the fundamentals of flight, the internal combustion engine, relativity, Grimm's Laws of Phonetic Shift, most household physics, electricity, biology, and astronomy. I can read and navigate by maps. And I can offer insights into the way computers think.

But I'm too stupid to make a simple note. I'll explain.

This morning, as my lady wife and I were lazing around in bed, trying to come to grips with the day, she said something. I said something back. Soon we were laughing uproariously. And I said, There's an essay for you.

And she said, No, I think it's yours.

And I said, Hmmm. Maybe I'll use it for my blog.

And she said, Excellent idea. Write it down so you don't forget it.

Bwoop! Bwoop! Bwoop!

I wrote the first paragraph in my head while showering.

I had the punchline ready before we got to the Chinese Lunch Buffet.

Now it's about 9:30PM and I've been trying for two hours to remember what the original idea was, much less any of the details.

Nothing. I got nothing. A big old blank void in my head, an empty space on the map labeled "Here be dragons."

Actually, that's not entirely true. I happen to have a very nice notepad. It's green and spiral-bound at the top, and it says "Memo" on the front. Amy got it for me and made me promise I'd jot down ideas as they came to me. And I've been pretty good about it. It has all sorts of notes in it, some of which are legible.

But right now I'm a-feared that a brilliantly funny idea has slipped past me, and I'll never recover it. And that's a pity, cause you would have laughed your butt off.

So she said, looking at my piteous moroseness, I want you to sit right down and write a paragraph on how you learned your lesson.

So I said, Better yet, I'll post it.

The moral of this story is: No matter how intelligent you think you are, and no matter how brilliant an idea is, never never never trust yourself to remember it.

Anybody who does that is an idiot.

And now if you'll pardon me, I'm going to write that down somewhere.