Clematis

I know what you mean about the weekends. I have been alone most of my adult life...in and out of some relationships but lots of time alone in between. Friends couldn't do anything because Friday and Saturday nights are "date nights" with spouse/partner and/or spouse and family. Sundays are definitely "family day" and it's hard to get anybody to do anything. When I lived in Tucson I used to go hang out at the medical library on Friday/Saturday nights because it was deserted, easy to park, and easy to get on a computer to look up stuff I was interested in or researching. My first year in Sedona working as a school psych, I used to work really late on Fridays because it was easy to get a lot done because no one was there. I got used to going everywhere alone-movies, hiking, shows, meals, everywhere. Then my dad was here and for ten years I never had to worry about what to do on the weekends or holidays when everybody was getting together with family to have a BBQ or a special meal or whatever. Anytime I wanted company to do something with, he was there-wanting to spend time with me doing whatever I wanted to do, or whatever were could come up with, or doing nothing but hanging out together. And now that is gone and I am back to being alone. I think "green burials" are a cool idea...and it's what people did for millennia. You just get buried in a burlap sack with no chemicals. Ashes to ashes... Only thing is, I would like to have an extra big sack so that I can take Mister Cello with me. You know, the Egyptians used to do that sort of thing...send things along for the afterlife. I don't thing after you die that your spirit is under the ground, but I figure that as much time as I've spent alone while alive, the last thing I would want is to spend eternity lying underground alone. And if someone wants to play my cello after I'm gone, they can play one of my other cellos. Mr. C is going with me!

Thank you! I'm glad you like them.

I had the most amazing revelation today- I can be such a clueless idiot it is amazing. I may have less self-awareness than the flowers I paint. I was going through tons of stuff at my own condo with the help of my friend, who is a tidy person. I know she wonders how my house became such a train wreck of a mess, and it is rather embarrassing and hard to explain. I moved to Sedona in 2005 and sweated bullets through my first year as a school psychologist. My internship had inadequate direction and instruction, and I landed a job where I was the only school psych in the district and so there was no one to help me or answer questions. On top of that, I started off very behind for other reasons that weren't my fault. I also began this job a few months after my mother died and I was ill with a respiratory infection that lingered because I wasn't able to get the right antibiotic at the start and so it became very entrenched. I was unable to drink cold beverages, sing, or talk without horrible coughing for six months. I thought I would never get my voice back. Also at this time I was talking to my father every evening for at least an hour and sometimes two or three hours, trying to keep him alive after he lost his beloved wife. I thought if I just hung onto him tight enough I could keep him alive. I felt like I had him on some kind of a life support system. I also started trying to coax him into moving to AZ. After all that I learned to play the violin by sight reading dozens of songbooks-thousands of tunes. I bought a keyboard so that I could get a book from the library and play every song whether I knew it or not, by playing it on the keyboard first to get it in my ear. It wasn't that it was relaxing-more like that it was just stressful enough to take my mind off my struggle at work that I could get a break and eventually go to sleep. The following spring (2006), my dad bought his condo in March but didn't move out to AZ until November. That summer I was out in his garage painting the entire thing, ceiling down, painting the floor a lovely blue grey and imbedding sand into it so that he would not slip on the floor of the home gym I had planned for him. As it turned out, he wasn't nearly strong enough to exercise alone, and I got him to join a gym with a personal trainer. The exercise equipment is still out there and the beautiful garage got stuffed with boxes & stuff. We got through a few years with me working and spending all the time I could with him. I wasn't doing as much for him as I was at the end, but I don't think anyone thought he would be doing ok without me. Then I lost my job in 2009 and this is where the big warp comes in. My recollection is that I brought home all the boxes of stuff from my office, dumped them on the garage floor at the far end, and proceeded to do very little but grieve the loss of my job and my independence. I remember playing the guitar, starting the cello, doing a little painting, and lying on the floor with Mister Cello, hoping that my cello I could stop breathing simultaneously and just die. My father carried me financially for several years because aside from a few paid gigs and a little home health care work as a social worker, I had very little income. I wasn't sure why he was willing to help me because I was doing almost nothing. It was horribly demoralizing and hard to even think about those years once they were over. Then today It occurred to me what I was really doing, because we were sifting through the evidence and documentation of my "nothing-doingness". When I lost my job I could hardly sleep from nightmares all night about losing my job, from which I would awaken with the truth that I really had lost my job. I went into hyperdrive. I applied to nursing school. I took the CNA course the summer after losing my job. I took all of the prerequisites for the nursing program in one year. One semester I had 21 credits of math and science. I had to get three overrides; one to take that many credit hours, one to start the math course late (I tried to CLEP out of it but missed by a few points), and the other override to miss the math class during half of the sessions because it conflicted with the chemistry lab. The no-nonsense math teacher told me she wasn't going to help me-I had to figure it out myself. She ended up not only giving me an A, but also giving me a math award for a term paper I chose to write instead of a book report (What is this, fourth grade I thought) about the derivation of the 12-tone scale in music. This teacher "never" gave math awards-the other teachers and students were stunned. Also, during this I was getting up every morning at 4:30 so that I could practice the guitar for three hours before school. Then I got into the nursing program with scholarships to pay for my tuition and books. By that time I was playing gigs at art openings, restaurants, etc and had rehearsals with my duo partner as well as individual practice. And I was seeing clients as a social worker. Eventually I decided that I really didn't want to be a nurse badly enough to get through the program, and I stayed in school but changed my major to art. I intensified my work on the guitar and cranked out enough paintings (22) for a one-woman-show in the studio where I took guitar lessons, and performed a solo guitar recital in the middle of my art show, with my paintings all around me. Unfortunately, by the time I actually played the recital I had found professional work (in the fall of 2011) and I had less time to practice the guitar. So I was disappointed in my performance, but the people who came thought it was good. And my memory was that I had spent about four years lying on the floor? For starters, it was only two years I didn't work, and I was a whirling dervish of goal-oriented activity! How could all of that just slip my mind???

I'm glad you like them. And this was an important step of me coming into my own as an artist, realizing who I was, and coming out from my mother's shadow, where I actually never was-I just thought I was there. There has been some satisfaction to me in accomplishing what I have in watercolor because my mother was afraid of watercolor. She didn't have the control that she had in oils. It can be stressful to do watercolors, and you are always on the fence of balancing the timing of too soon (too wet) or too late (too dry), as well as balancing between having enough control but letting go so that the water can carry the paint and create the magical effects of watercolor. I came across a watercolor that my mother did in art school (she went to Moore College of Art after we all graduated from high school). It was on a full sheet of watercolor paper (I usually use a 1/4 sheet)-so that was bold, but the painting looked like she was afraid of really using the paint. It was interesting because it's the only watercolor I ever saw of hers. Had she had the choice, she probably would not have allowed me to see this one. I'm glad I got to see it.

So I was painting poinsettias in oil and you can see the transition into watercolor. The watercolor isn't great but the subject is much better addressed in watercolor, and so you can see this one tiny/huge step I made in just those two paintings. The watercolor is part of a little set of three, but I can live with having the other two as my "journal entry" or documentation of my realization that I was in love with watercolors. I may have fallen into that by accident, but it was my destiny. Later that winter, the poinsettias lost their leaves-they don't last forever, and I fell into flowers so deeply I will probably never get out!

Nothing from Maui...sorry, Stephen! But this is what I would like to contribute: The one on the right is a watercolor -of a poinsettia, and the other three are oils that I did a few years ago. I always thought I wanted to do oils like my mother did, but when I did this brief foray into oils a few years ago, I realized that while I wasn't looking or thinking about it, somehow I fell head over heels with watercolor and there was no toning back. So, what do you think? Two will be very seasonal in October, getting close to Christmas, and the other two are very southwest. Would you like these? Laura

Marg, you are probably exhausted...how could you not be? Try and remember that the more tired you are the worse everything seems, ok? - Laura

Thanks, Karen! My dad was great-not perfect, but considering the twisted background he came from and what he went through, he came out more than ok. When he came out to AZ, everyone said to me the same thing, "Oh, I just love your dad-he is the sweetest man!" It took me aback in the beginning because I had never heard anyone say he was sweet. But he loved me-that was for sure. He got to know me quite well in the end, and thought I was terrific-quite the compliment. I remember once having a conversation with him about my sisters and asking him something about why they might have done something. He said, "I really have no idea-I don't really know either of them very well". It seemed to odd, but I realized it was true. We all lived with him when we were growing up, of course, but they lived within an hour of him their entire adult lives until he was 78 and moved out west. They didn't really know him and he really didn't know them. No one bothered to take the trouble to work on it. I invested in getting to know him and what I gained was incredible. I'm glad you had a dad who was a rock!

Marg, I did this as well in 2005...sold the house to a close but kinda neurotic friend. No, more than neurotic. I asked a realtor I was friendly with to do the paperwork and she said she'd do it for $2000. I told her we'd better make it $3000, because of the neurotic factor. I didn't know what would happen, but thought this friend was likely to pull some kind of stunt that would make $2000 seem inadequate. She knew my friend, thought about it, and said, "Yeah-I think you're right." Sure enough there was something, but it all worked out. I think there are areas that involve complex law where you really do need a specialized professional, because ordinary people don't know what they are doing. My dad was an attorney, and I came across an enormous fat briefcase case of materials designed to show a lay person how to set up a trust, write a will, set up an estate that wouldn't have to go through probate, etc. Based on the date the kit was made, he still had all his marbles then-and he was an attorney himself. I could see the wheels turning in his head as I looked at this kit. He thought he could do it, the than as he rethought it, considered that he specialized in patent law, particularly in foreign patent law as related to chemicals. He hired an attorney who specialized in wills, trusts, and estate law. When he came out to AZ and needed more assistance with his estate planning I found him an attorney here with the same specialty and he was on it like a duck on a June bug. I would be a LOT more worried about my sisters trying to pull something if his affairs hadn't been set up properly.

Yeah Kay, I think you are right; it is very similar how our mothers were, yours and mine. And my sisters are doing the sane thing. They have both "stormed out" so to speak while I am settling the estate and are not speaking to me. It is like they have also died, except they haven't and I have to keep reminding myself to not call them, especially my older sister, with whom I used to be very close. Going through both condos, but especially mine, I come across things she made, wrote, and gave me. It gives me the same poignant feelings as coming across things that were my dad's or that he gave me, or that are in his handwriting. She feels just as gone, and I'll say to my friend helping me, "Oh, look-this is from my sister, back in the days when she used to like me." It's probably a good thing, because when we talk we have nothing but disagreements. She feels victimized by my having bought her art, getting my dad to give her money to keep her in a heated house with groceries, and ultimately keeping her house from foreclosing. She comes up with the craziest things to find fault with me on, and gets frustrated because she can't win an argument with me. Her style is to get in a few quick jabs and then run like hell. Mine is to be direct, stand on my own two feet and try to come to an understanding and resolution. We may have come from the same family, but I spent decades in psychotherapy and she spent those same years trying to resolve the same issues with wine. She is like a child-maybe early adolescent...

Yes, a friend said she would get rid of it for me. I had a lot of counseling -years of counseling about my mother. More than anything it was a relief when she died because she couldn't do any further damage. Unfortunately, I have now realized that she trained my narcissistic sisters, one of whom has two narcissistic daughters of her own. Fortunately they are on the other side of the country. Also, I'm not sure it's any comfort, but my sisters are reticent about tangling with me, because they never win (because they take a position that is mean and dishonest), and I am fearless in getting in their face and speaking what I see as the truth. I am not mean or abusive to them, but I they just don't get anywhere from bullying me, even as a team. It would be easier to let go of my mother if her legacy was not continuing through my sisters...It is hard to get over what won't go away. I am hoping that at least one of my sisters will come back to me after the estate is settled-the older one who is an artist. Unfortunately, while I believed helping her by buying her art and saving her house was a favor, it made her resent me. My grief counselor told me this makes some sense because it would make her feel inadequate to have her sister-her younger sister-have to help her. Therefore she resents me. It makes sense, but it scares me. This sister is probably going to keep needing help. What am I supposed to do-watch her suffer when I could help her?

I have thought about it...but the best prints are expensive and you may not sell. That's how my sister convinced me to do the RedBubble thing, because the person who wants the art pays for only what they want. You are right- it's hard to explain to someone who is not an artist. I have a friend who is a skilled potter and he sells his stuff. He has given me a number of his pieces. Some of them he gave me because he couldn't sell them, but some of them he could have sold. He told me one time that he has given me pieces because my thrill at receiving them is worth more to him than the money he would have gotten out selling them. I have a bowl that he gave me because seven little black drops of someone else's glaze dripped onto this cream colored bowl in the kiln. He said he couldn't possibly sell it. I call it my dalmatian bowl and eat out of it at least once a day. When I remind him about this bowl, he shakes his head, rolls his eyes, and smiles...

I think the worst came from someone very near and dear to me, who works in mental health and should know better. She said to me, " Well, it's not like you lost your child or your spouse or something." No, I didn't lose my child or my spouse. I lost the guy who told me as a youth, "no one will ever love you more than your parents do" and was right-at least about himself. No one even has or will love me as much as he did. I also lost the guy who taught me how to catch a frog, paddle a canoe, tune and play the ukulele, fix a flat tire on my bike, tie my shoes, write a paragraph and an essay, take care of and appreciate good tools, and ultimately how to be successful in life. He taught me how to catch a fish and that no one else really wanted to clean fish you caught soI'd better either learn to clean them myself or prepare to pay someone else to do it. (I decided to paddle my sister around while she fished-and she could clean her own fish. But I'd get the boat right where she wanted and keep it there very quietly, which is not easy in an aluminum canoe on a rocky river.) I lost the guy who in his last years was my best friend and constant companion. People in town say they hardly ever saw one of us without the other. Of course we each did things independently, but we were seen as a unit and a duo. We were... I lost the guy who was interested in everything I had to say or paint or write. I lost the guy who would rescue me when I got into trouble, financial or otherwise. In the middle of his last summer, I ran out of gas in town, with the cat in the car and it was 100 degrees. He could barely walk, but he got in his car and rescued me. During his last winter, I got locked out of my back door when the security bar slid down in it's slot so the slider wouldn't open. It was dark and cold and I was outside with socks but no shoes and no coat. My back yard/patio is down in a pit. Even if I had been able to climb the rock wall through the rose bushes and stumble through a rocky ditch, through the rocks and cactus behind the house and back down a rocky slope without falling repeatedly, I wouldn't have been able to get in the front door. I did have my phone in my pocket and called him. He was asleep, but got up out of bed and drove over to my house to save me. He fixed things for me, he built things for me, and he taught me how to fix and build things. He taught me how to do so many things, and in was always there for me. Even in the years when I was giving him hell for some of his misdeeds to me when I was young (and he deserved it-he wasn't a saint), when I ended up in San Diego with a friend who turned to be a crazed bipolar off her meds manic (I thought she was going to kill me), I called him collect on his vacation on the Maryland shore and he helped me figure out how to get a flight back home by finding a travel agent. He probably paid for it as well-I don't remember. That was before cell phones and the internet. He taught me how to identify and deal with black widow spiders when I was a child. I repaid him by hunting down and dealing with the black widow spiders around his house and mine (where he visited) when he was a fragile old man. He loved me unconditionally, and it was mutual. I couldn't have lost more if I had lost a spouse. It is a devastating loss, and comparing it to other losses is insensitive and rather stupid, because you just can't do it. My sisters lost the same man, but they did not lose a relationship like I did. We all lost my mother, but it was not the same...there won't ever be anyone else for me like him, and that's just how it is...

I've had people in my house and my dad's house eyeballing this and that; it's really annoying. The woman who took care of Lena while I was in Maui has asked me about several things, commented that she liked them just in case I wanted to get rid of them. Well, no, I agreed with her that the things she mentioned were definitely some of the most beautiful things in the house, and not on my list to get rid of. I want to get rid of trash and useless stuff, not the most beautiful things in the house. As far as building up your muscles, the only way to do that is to move them back and forth every few days-but make sure to do it with good form, and make sure to start with the smaller ones and gradually mover up to the bigger ones. Otherwise you're more likely to just injure yourself. But if you carefully moved them back and forth every other day for a month or two you would definitely build muscle.

I've been having some trouble with my dad's books too, Marg. He had all these health books. I left them alone in the first pass. In the next pass all the health books left. If I wanted information like that, I'd look it up on the internet. I keep finding things that make me cry, touch my heart, or just make me wonder what he was thinking. I found a little collection of books my mother had on hand to read to visiting grand babies. They were about flowers and kitties and bunnies and beautifully illustrated; I kept them. I found a mug with a picture of my mother holding one of those grand babies that she was so much more thrilled with she had been with her own children. I didn't think a thrift store would want a mug with my mother's picture on it, I sure didn't want it, but I couldn't make myself put it in the trash. I kept asking people to please "make it go away and never come back". Today-the third day-it finally left the house.

Maybe that is like a community college; they offer a lot of short programs that are geared toward something practical, but you can also use it as a stepping stone to a regular college. I know there are separate schools for specific skills like hair/makeup, mechanical work, technical/computer work, etc. but they seem to be all off by themselves. The school you describe sounds like it has multiple practical programs and maybe doesn't make kids take freshman English and algebra and all that stuff. Lots of kids are on the college path and that's great-the path is clearly defined. Other kids are in Special Education and the school is legally bound to help them on a transition plan to get them into some kind of program where they will learn a "trade" with which to support them. But what about the kids in the middle? What is supposed to happen with them? How are they supposed to figure out how to be successful as an adult if their parents can't help them. Many public school systems really drop the ball on a huge number of students. I think your granddaughter is lucky to have you as a fan and supporter, even if you do talk about yourself as if you were in the running for the oldest person alive, who is about 116 years old I think...

I think you are right-people really don't know what to say and so they come up with annoying cliches, that are really insensitive if you think about it. I don't know how many people said to me after my dad died, "well it was his time", "he's in a better place now", "he's out of pain now". These were mostly from people who really didn't know him or whether he was in pain or in a bad place, or anything else. The latest one is "I'm sorry for your loss"; I have seen teenagers whip that one out. When my dad died I was a little concerned that I might lose control and slap someone who said "I'm sorry for your loss". But I didn't slap anybody. Every time I heard this I would say, "Yeah, me too!" and then just start talking about how hard it had been. I found that even though people didn't know how to start, they were willing to listen. I also found out that when I shared my experience with them, people frequently shared some loss of theirs with me, and I felt some comradery and less isolated.

I think for many young people who experience a loss of someone close to them, it is often a grandparent or someone in their grandparents' generation, and the young mourner is not as close to the one that is gone as they would be to their parents, because parents of a 30-year old are generally relatively young and healthy. But people develop serious illness and even die at any age, and there are thirty-year-olds who have lost their parents, siblings, cousins, and even their own children. Horrible loss can come at any age, but by the time you are say twice your age, most of the people you know about your age will have had a loss very close to them. I know your mother is still alive, but you are looking at the possibility of losing her, and when someone has dementia the truth is that you lose them by degrees. If she has already been diagnosed with dementia, it has probably already progressed to some degree, and she is probably not quite the person you knew when you were younger. The truth is that you do have a lot of company-people who are struggling with dementia of a parent-they just may be somewhat older than you are. You might try looking for a support group for people who also have a close relative with dementia. It might be a caregivers' support group, and the others are likely to be somewhat older than you, but struggling with some of the same issues.

I went to the place where I see the OT and the Speech Path, who recently did an evaluation with me. The OT explained the results of the testing to me this afternoon and why based on that and some other things they want me to see a neurologist for a post-concussion workup. Some of the scores on the test were at or below the 1st percentile, especially things that involve timing. That is terrible! They also told me that they think my plan of marching in the Fourth of July parade (playing the cello) was risky. Actually she said it was very risky, for me at this point, even though the 4th of July is all about freedom and independence. But I think it will be ok, and she said that before I demo'd what I meant with the intern and using some pieces of PVC pipe as the cello and bow. I told her that we would have time to practice before Monday. Then I told her I would round up a spotter to walk next to me, looking out for obstacles and calling out chords to me so I don't have to struggle with remembering the chords while walking. She thought that would improve the situation, but that I'm to bring Mister Cello with me to my OT appointment on Thursday, so she can check this out. Bonita and I did this last year with the cello. Here is a picture of Bonita and I practicing parading Mister Cello around at band rehearsal last night. You can't really see the guy on the right, but he is the "spotter". I told the OT, well I certainly wouldn't want to injure Mister Cello by dropping him or something. She rolled her eyes and told me she was worried about my head-not Mister Cello. I think it will be ok...We did this last year...my dad got to see it. No one had ever seen a cello in a parade before, except Woody Allen, of course, in Take The Money and Run. although we do it with a lot more style...

I am thinking about the painting...it would be have to be something I would be willing to be part with. My painting is a journey and part of how I can tell where I am going is by where I have been, which is my paintings. I need to see my trail in order to see where I am going. The easiest thing to part with would be something that is not terribly recent. It might seem like I have so many and could just paint more, but it's not like that. It might be for a commercial painter because they are selling paintings for a living and that is their intention. My painting is my life, and my paintings are parts of me, and looking at them is how I come to grips with myself and what I am living. My mother didn't sell her work and I don't either. I did in the beginning, and for ridiculously low prices, but at some point it became unbearable-like parting with a finger or a part of my soul that I couldn't get back. I probably do have pieces that I could part with, but I would have to think about it carefully and it wouldn't be the one of the best and most recent things I have done. I know that there are people who love my work, but the problem is that they don't love it as much as I do. My mother told me that the best way to price your artwork is to price it at a point where you would rather have the money than the piece. When I left for Hawaii, I was really scared that I hadn't painted in so long that I had lost my chops, and since I am spending the summer working on my dad's estate while grappling with grief and a head injury, I wasn't sure when I would be able to paint again, or how far I would slide before I was able to get back to it. I can't even begin to tell you what it meant to me that I was able to produce those paintings. They are not quite at the level I was before, but I think they are pretty good. But more than that, they are like proof of my hope of a future and that I will be able to continue to be the person I have been, in spite of my losses. I have flowers outside my door here at my dad's condo, and there are more flowers at my own condo, with more blooms every day at both houses. I look at them and soak in their loveliness, but I can't paint them because I am too busy or too drained. Day after day of lovely unpainted blossoms...I try to get what I can from them because I know I can't paint them, even though they are right outside my door. I don't know, maybe I should try harder to fit in a little painting time, but it doesn't even seem possible. I don't know...I read what I've written and I must seem like an obsessed lunatic. I hope it makes some sense. Nevertheless, what I do sell is at a site called RedBubble.com you go to that site and you can type "BossaRosa" into their search bar and you can buy all kinds of items with my images on them. None of the images from this year are on there. I had worked out this arrangement whereby my dad paid my sister to do commercial art for me, as in posting my work on RedBubble since she can do graphic art as well as fine art and she is a lot better and faster than I at PhotoShop stuff. I thought it was a genius idea; my sister had a few hours of guaranteed work at $40 an hour, I had a graphic artist at my bidding, and my dad got some satisfaction from knowing she was working for it. Now she isn't even talking to me and I'm going to have to figure out how to put my own stuff on there. Anyway, you can get coffee cups, travel mugs, prints, tote bags, etc.-all kinds of stuff on RedBubble. Most of the money goes to RedBubble, but they make the item and ship it. It's a pretty good arrangement. I get a a few dollars, and get to hang onto my original. And if someone really loves my work, they can have it.

She sounds like a great girl and an interesting student. What is she supposed to take at the vo-tech school? I'm not familiar with these schools, but it sounds like a great idea. Can you tell me any more about them?

You're right, Kay; I am speaking in generalities. It is very unusual to find a person with a high IQ that is very balanced-all the scores up high like an alpine meadow. It is much more typical to see very skewed scores that look like a mountain range, with significant dips. Also, people who have very low IQ's tend to be rather content because they take things at face value and don't get into neurotic overthinking about stuff because they don't have that ability. Probably a lot of us could learn something from that. For example, it might be better to think to yourself, "That person doesn't like me-I'm going to stay away from him/her" than to get all worried about what is wrong and why they don't like me and what can I do or not do about it and how and why it's unfair and all that. But those are generalities; an individual is just that. One of my best friends has a dad who was astonishingly bright and educated-a retired professor. I think he had two PhD's, but could have been a college prof in probably any of the sciences or higher maths, as well as Chinese History, World History, and some other stuff. He has gone downhill quite a bit, which is very sad. It used to be that you would make a comment and he could deliver a fully prepared personal lecture that would pass muster anywhere, and was also entertaining. He doesn't talk as much anymore, I think mostly because he is painfully aware of how much he used to know and that he's sliding. He is 87 and I know he won't live forever, but he's doing ok today. We have been close for decades-he has been like a second father to me. Anyway, he told me something interesting about 15 years ago when his daughter had breast cancer and her dad and I were following her around to doctor's appointments taking copious notes and asking questions. He said, "Statistics tell you nothing about an individual. A certain problem could have a 99% rate of a good outcome, but for the one person in a hundred they have a 100% chance of a bad outcome." So, statistics may be interesting, but they aren't personal and for an individual they may be totally meaningless...

You are right-but this mechanic probably had strengths in certain areas like visual-spatial skills and possibly quantitative reasoning, with relative deficits in reading skills, which would make it difficult for him to perform in school without significant intervention, assistance, and accommodations. Probably good at sports and doing anything with his hands. Probably good at making friends and loves animals. Those things are way more important in the long run than having a huge vocabulary. If a musician, probably learns better by ear and finds learning to read music tortuous. What I described above is a classic profile for a person who would have the potential to be a great mechanic, or even an engineer if the whole profile was lifted about a bit higher. Most school psychologists and other psychologists who do this kind of work find that the "g" is almost meaningless, and if you are trying to help a kid who is struggling in school and feeling like an idiot because some things are hard, you have to help them find their strengths and use them to the hilt to compensate for their weaknesses-like reading, and then helping them get to a reading level so that they can do the reading they need to be a mechanic. Then they are set and can have a successful career, a good life, set aside for a retirement, and all that. Probably do better in the long run than a person with a very high IQ with a masters degree in music, art, French literature, philosophy and so on.

Your mama was right-in some ways. I find the topic of intelligence and how people view it to be endlessly fascinating, which is part of the reason I ended up in a career where I test IQ for a living. The problem with intelligence is that there are different kinds-verbal, visual-spatial, social, musical, and so on. I had a course on intelligence theory-there are many. One guy came up with a grid in which there were 256 kinds (and combinations) of intelligence. Most tests have 4 or 5 clusters that get a score and also a "g", which is general or overall IQ. After testing hundreds of people, I have found that people in the middle are the happiest and the best adjusted, and also that the people who are a little above average think the people who are way above them are total idiots. The people with stellar IQ's tend to be the most neurotic. Many of them have huge gaps in between their strengths and weaknesses and that makes them insecure. To a person with a super high IQ, a dip into the average range is a dip that makes them feel like an idiot. Many highly gifted people don't even finish high school, much less college or grad school, and the schools in our country have no more idea how to deal with gifted kids than they did when I was a kid. It's really tragic, because as a culture we are taking many of our best brains and "kicking them to the curb". And what happens to a person like this? They end up in some low paid job, working for someone who isn't anywhere near as smart as them, who thinks they are a total idiot, because the person with a stellar IQ is by definition "not normal" and has creative ideas that only another really smart person would "get". In going through my father's stuff, I have found at least 6 books on obscure words that most people don't know. I get rid of them the second I see them-they are worthless. The point of communication-is communicating and if you can't do it well, you've missed the boat. Most smart people have bigger vocabularies that average people, but the more words you use that your listener doesn't understand, the more they just think you're a jerk. When I was a kid I was picked on mercilessly in school and I just took it because I was picked on at home. My dad told me when I was about 11 that I should just tell them any of them that they were a "pusillanimous churl". Even as a kid, I knew that would only make things worse. I have spent a lot of my life, and certainly since studying to be a school psychologist, learning how to express sophisticated ideas in ordinary language. I want people to be able to understand me when I am talking or writing. I think I have done pretty well at it, and I'm proud of it. I go to meetings as a school psychologist and explain the results to the team, which includes other masters level professionals, teachers, teacher aides, administrators, parents, and sometimes the student. I am only doing an evaluation, but they are working or living with the student and they really know more than I do-I am just putting it into numbers. I really work hard to gather a LOT of information about a student from the people who know them best-especially the parents. I try hard to write my reports so that they are easy to read-by anyone, and at the meeting I work hard to explain the results so that everyone there understands what I am saying and what it means-especially the parents. I also talk to the parents on the phone about the results, generally for somewhere around an hour, for which I am not paid. I figure that it's their right to have the advantage of everything I know and they are the ones that will be around that student as he or she grows up, maybe goes to college, and learns to navigate the world. If they understand their child's brain, they should be more helpful to the child. The hardest thing I ever do at work is to tell parents-for the first time-that their child's IQ falls in the range of what we used to call "mental retardation", but now we call it "intellectual disability". It doesn't matter what you call it-to learn your child has an IQ at 70 or below is devastating news, although the parents naturally are hoping their fears were wrong. I think the best compliment I have ever received was from a third grade teacher who had seen me do this several times. She once said (to a handful of teachers) after a meeting, "You know, if someone had to tell me that my child was mentally retarded, I would want it to be Laura." Well, anyway, I hope that was helpful-or at least interesting... It was kind of long...

I am a school psychologist and I have developed a bell curve inside my brain-it comes up everywhere in how I think about things. My observation is that people who tend to be out on the end of the bell curve in one area tend to be out on the extreme end in other areas. Abnormal IQ is essentially extreme creativity, and people out there do not think normal thoughts. By definition they are abnormal, and that doesn't make people happy or well-balanced. It also does not give them good social skills, although some of that can be developed with effort. There is a fair amount of research about creativity and madness. I know what you mean about the bipolar...it is also on a continuum. I have never been officially diagnosed with cyclothymia, but it would hard to deny. A lot of ups and downs and changes, and it's tied to the creativity, without a doubt. I try hard to cover up what I can and not go off the rails. Nevertheless, my issues are rather moderate and I seem to have found a balance. When I was younger I tried to cover up anything that someone might find unusual and that was a mistake because I was rightly seen as fake. Now I am running around with a flower in my hair and very artsy skirts and BIrks on my feet, my cello is in a costumed case, is on Facebook, and subscribes to the Rolling Stone. I have synesthesia, sense things from flowers/fruits, and paint the three dimensional lines I feel in music. Fortunately I have focused enough on developing professional competence that people sense that and take me seriously. Nevertheless, I always feel lucky and like I am getting away with something if I can be myself, even a little toned down, and navigate the world without being crushed. I do live in a creative area and that helps. Anyway, about the bipolar, I think the degree of it is everything. Severe bipolar is serious enough to destroy a person's life, and milder versions are much more common-especially in gifted people-and tend to be more manageable. Nevertheless, having a lot of energy can make people crazy just being around it. I should shut up and go to bed...poor Marty has to read all of this. I am trying to be more concise, but it's hard.