BerthaBlog

In class, there are usually several other people who are much faster doing the problems. If the instructor poses a question, they will pop out the answer almost immediately while I’m still plodding away at it.

Doing homework, I likewise take a long time to get it done. I slug through the material at a snail’s pace, moving back and forth between the text and the exercises as I reassure myself that yes, I’m doing it the way the book says it should be done.

When it’s test time, I still have this perception that I am one of the slower students in the class. As soon as the test is handed out to the class, I develop a hyper-focussed concentration on the thing. I grind single-mindedly through it without pause, because I’m convinced that I will run out of time before I’m finished. After all, I’m one of the slow ones.

Somehow I maintain this perception even though I’m usually one of the first ones done with the test. Sometimes I am the first one done, and then I go back through and carefully check all my answers, because I must have done something wrong if I’ve finished before anyone else.

My husband tells me I have this problem because I tend to hang out with very smart people (he modestly didn’t mention that he was included in this group, although he is one of the smartest people I know). All of the people I consider to be close friends are, coincidentally, also in the super-smart category. The classmates I like to sit with at lunch are the bright overachievers. As a result, I consider myself to be average. Perhaps even a little below average. I wind up feeling like the fabled tortoise, doing my best to keep up while everyone sprints ahead.

Spousal Unit once jokingly said I should start hanging out with stupid people so I’d finally feel like the smart one. But I’ve worked in retail, and stupid people make my blood pressure go up. I guess I must not be that slow if all my smart friends can stand to have me around.

Yesterday I was perusing the fine wines at the grocery store, and made a new discovery:

Naturally, I had to get it. How can you turn down ecologically friendly French rabbit wine?

That evening the Spousal Unit, who is actually something of a connoisseur, spied my purchase.

“What is this?” he asked, appalled.

“Wine in a box!”

“Good wine is not delivered in cardboard!”

“I never said it was good wine.”

He’s the one who gets the good wine. He buys fruity, delicate reds from Sonoma and rich, heady cabernets from Chile. I get stuff like Woot Cellars’ Polyphemus, a polyglot spirit with a picture of a green, one-eyed monster on the label and comic-book font exhortations describing it. (On the back, the monster was drinking wine with his pinky in the air.) I immediately started calling it the “Comic Book Wine.” We took it with us to a friend’s Halloween party. It seemed appropos.

He makes informed choices based on the region the grapes were from and the reputation of the winery. I buy the ones with interesting names like “Fat Bastard,” or pictures of animals on the label.

Generally we have his wines for special occasions, and mine are just for evenings when we want to sit on the back porch and chat over wine and snacks.

But for the record, the Polyphemus was actually quite good.