Saturday, April 14, 2012

Help, I can't find my operator's manual!

I still have the cold or whatever it is, but I've only taken a little more prednisone.  I'm tired (today I've started feeling better off and on, though), a bit short of breath, especially if I try to do anything especially strenuous, like climbing a flight of stairs. (sigh)  But, given what could (still) happen, I'm pretty happy to be able to mostly function.  So far so good--I haven't won the battle yet, but neither has the cold.  It's been a good couple of days to print out lots of homeschool worksheets in advance--that's not too physically demanding.  I'm happy to still be able to play the piano.




In my never-ending quest to explain to my fellow human beings (if indeed that's what I am) Why I Am the Way I Am, I've decided (see my Apr. 5 post) that perhaps I really am twins.  Seriously.  You'd know I'm telling the truth if you could see the subtests on my IQ tests.

Twin A has wonderfully high scores.  She should have gone to college and gotten a doctorate in something.  She plays Chopin mazurkas, reads just about anything she wants, knows how to spell almost everything, and is really good at math.  She got A's & B's in school.

Twin B wasn't so lucky.  Some of her scores are low enough to merit her confinement in an institution.  She can only drive to a few places, can't recognize people, sucks at anything mechanical, doesn't see things that are right in front of her, doesn't hear a lot of what's going on around her.  She has lousy eye contact and doesn't get facial expressions in general.  She got D's & F's in school.

Sometimes people meet Twin A first.  After they meet Twin B, they decide she (they?) is (are?) either being really difficult, or that there's some kind of mental illness going on.  They get angry at her for not trying hard enough.

If they meet Twin B first, they pretty much ignore her (them).  They have a lot of trouble believing Twin A actually exists.

It's almost funny, the way, once people pigeonhole you, they almost never change their minds, no matter what evidence you present them with.

I can see why people get confused.  I get confused.  And just to make sure everybody stays confused, once in a while Twin B remembers how to get somewhere (maybe because she memorized every street and direction on the way there and back and then got lucky that it worked) or recognizes somebody (because she knows she needs to memorize that the waitress has blond hair, a wide face, and a nose stud or she won't be able to find her later), thereby 'proving' that she can do it if she really tries.

I should have been born with an operator's manual.

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