She Said / He Sed

Bee and I are not on the same intellectual wavelength.  Our backgrounds were just too different. 
Growing up, I was your average neurotic, socially-inept goody-two-shoes bookworm.  Doing well in school was how I found satisfaction with myself.  Bee was your average rock-'n-roll playing, muscle-shirt wearing, 'stache sporting party-goer.  School didn't provide self-satisfaction in the same way social interaction did.

I scored a perfect 800 on my verbal SATs (thanks to the bonus points you get just for signing your name), then moved on to study Biology and Education at a semi-Ivy League university.  Bee barely passed English and moved on to welding school.  Sure, I was lucky to pass my science courses, whereas Bee graduated at the top of his welding class, but still . . .

It's a good thing we didn't meet when we were younger: I would have found him to be a wild, intimidating loser; he would have viewed me as a narrow-minded snob who needed to remove that rod from my ass.


Actually, I'm still kind of that way, but at least he's open to it.

Despite our differing backgrounds, I think that one of the reasons our marriage works is that neither one of us is more intelligent than the other.  Sure, I tend to write in complete sentences and at least make an effort to use proper grammar, while he can't master Spell Check and apparently is physically incapable of reaching the 'shift' key to capitalize a letter.  Yes, I can use the word 'precocious' in a sentence (even if I can't define it); he'll want to know what being 'precious' has to do with anything.

But he only reads non-fiction, and adores documentaries.  He wants to keep up on what's happening around the world, whereas what's happening in my kitchen is about all I'm prepared to handle right now.  I go out of my way not to read or watch anything that might depress me, so I have a very narrow world-view.  Bee finds depressing things fascinating because of the truth behind them, and he wants to understand the past to better comprehend the present.

If you were to ask me who is smarter, I wouldn't know what to say.  I might remember what I've read longer than Bee might, but he reads more and deeper things than I do; so who 'knows' more?  I might have studied calculus, but Bee can quickly add up a row of thirty figures without a calculator; so who's 'better' at math?

I could cite Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences and proclaim that Bee and I are equal in unequal ways, and it would be true.

But we are unequal in important ways, too.  Bee's past has taught him that 'book smarts' are not everything: that social connections are just as important.  He knows how to trade for a deal on local vegetables and enough eggs to last the rest of the year.  He recognizes that work isn't everything, and that you'll probably get more from visiting your great-grandma in Oklahoma than you'd get from those extra three days of math class.

At the same time, my past has taught me that school doesn't just teach you what to learn: it teaches you how to learn.  I may not know who to trade with, but I can figure out if the ratio of vegetables to time spent trading for them makes them economically viable.  And I can research the best discount website for flights to great-grandma in Oklahoma, then work out when to make up your math homework.

We might get frustrated with each other sometimes since our priorities are so different.  But, once the insults have stopped flying and the dust has settled, we can recognize that our partnership is made stronger by the different strengths we bring to it.