No, I’m not talking about those sorts of benefits. Instead, I’m talking about benefits of the intellectual kind – the ability to calculate things insanely quickly, the ability to do huge sums in my head, the natural understanding of concepts, strategies, and techniques. You’ve all heard of them – those genii who live glamerous but secluded lives, squandering their hard-earned on their many earthly posessions, passions, or even both.
If life were a Hollywood movie, they would be the ones the government calls on in times of emergency, when the words “national security” are whispered between men in black trenchcoats.
Enough of the narrative, though – needless to say, I’m not like those guys. Instead, I have to endure social awkwardness without any of the usual side-effects of such people, such as those with mild autism – their gifts are genius-level intelligence, a razor-sharp mind, and a helping of witty repartee at my disposal.
Sure, I don’t think I do too badly when around friends. The days of where I would top the class in almost every test are long gone, though, and now all I have to look forward to is scraping a mark meager enough for me to pass – but only just.
Maybe what I’m trying to say is that I’d like to be one of those guys, like the Bug in Matthew Reilly’s Hover Car Racer, who can calculate the most effecient course through a maze-like combination of gates and point scores, all in a number of seconds. There’s also this game on the iPhone, whose name I cannot remember at this particular time, where you had to flip a tile to set off a chain-reaction of other tiles. I’m sure that there’s some sort of pattern that would allow me to create a tileset that would continue indefinitely, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to figure out the correct one – my highest scores thus far have been flukes from a random arrangement of tiles.
Smart? I’d love to be smart – but does intelligence come with being smart, or is it the other way around?