If you want to know where this all came from, what set me off, read the immediately previous post, where I document a few things that happened at a M3nsa gathering in Maryland.I mentioned in a prior post (well, many prior posts) how M3nsa folk in general tend to have little common sense, and how impatient I get with them.
What I am about to say absolutely does not apply to all, and possibly not even most. I suspect that the "normal" folks in M3nsa are rarely seen. I suspect that there's a certain Type that is active, considers M3nsa to be their family (that phrase does turn up a lot), attends as many gatherings as they can, and that Type defaults to representing the group.
The Type:
- Refuses to read instructions or labels (Like "Emergency Off" on the Jacuzzi button). If they can't just dive in and do what they figure should work, then the thingy is obviously no good, because if it were good, it would work they way they would have designed it.
- Refuses to listen to any opinion that disagrees with their own opinion.
- Interrupts lecturers, even though the speaker has repeatedly said there would be a Q&A period at the end, to the point where there's no time for the Q&A at the end.
- Attempts to "trap" speakers, if only to demonstrate that they know more about the speaker's topic than the speaker himself.
- Is of the opinion that appearance doesn't matter, so does not style his or her hair or wear makeup or deodorant, does not coordinate clothing, and tends to live in jeans and T-shirts with writing on them, usually esoteric scientific puns.
- Feels superior when people don't "get" their T-shirts.
- Feels superior in general.
- Believes that if one is not a member of M3nsa, then one "is not intelligent". I have actually heard this many times. They always look confused when I ask, "When did you join? And were you stupid before you joined?"
- Are morbidly obese, and don't seem to know it. They have serious ankle, knee, and breathing problems, and don't associate them with their weight. At the gatherings, they rent scooters to get around the hotel, and the baskets on the front of the scooters are full of candy and munchies, which they eat constantly, even crinkling packages and crunching loudly during the lectures. When they need surgery, because they came down wrong on an ankle simply walking, or need a knee replaced, other M3nsans are sympathetic. (I'm not.)
- Are living hand-to-mouth, some because they are so obese they are on disability, some because they make poor financial decisions, some because they can't hold a job - usually because they can't get along with their "inferior" coworkers - and some because they refuse to do work that's beneath them and can't find work "worthy of their talents", so they don't work at all.
- Makes loud squealing noises when anyone offers them chocolate. I'm serious. The gatherings always have a one-hour Chocolate Orgy on Saturday afternoon, offering a chocolate fountain and a multitude of chocolate concoctions, and it's a wildebeest migration when the doors open, complete with the grunting and bleating. You don't want to be walking down the hall in the opposite direction. I've seen people come out of the door balancing plates carefully stacked six inches high.
- Can't work in committees because they know they're always right. They go to all the gatherings they can, and they attend local events, but most don't contribute much to the workings in the group. And yet, they are always the first to complain when things aren't done the way they would have done it.
- My man (whom I met at a gathering, incidentally) complains that he can't engage them in conversation. You ask a question of The Type, and you'll get a long and exhaustive monologue in reply, and when he's finished, he'll turn around and walk away. Like he thinks you asked the question just to learn from him. (Actually, I have a bit of that, too. I'm not comfortable with social chitchat.)
It wasn't always like that. Back in the seventies, when I joined in Washington, DC, that type existed, but was definitely in the minority. They seem to be taking over. Perhaps it's just that the more sensible and better socialized types are not attending gatherings any more, because of the preponderance of the ... uh ... superiority slobs? I know I'm getting turned off. The last three gatherings I've attended have had me wondering why I was there. There are a few reasonable people, here and there, but they're getting scarce.
How do people get to be like that? They constantly reassure themselves and each other how superior they are. Hey! It was a test! Just a test! You did well on a test! It might be the only thing you've ever done well on. Just look at yourselves, take a good long look! You're not, N-O-T, superior! You have some abilities. But everybody has some abilities, talents, gifts. Yours aren't all that special.
How do people get to be like that?
Perhaps it's because they grew up when IQ tests and educational "tracking", gifted classes, were all the rage. Perhaps they'd been told since infancy that they were gifted, extraordinary, superior, and when they had problems it was just that "ordinary" people didn't understand how advanced, how wonderful, how gifted, they were.
I grew up before tests and tracking. My father made sure I and my siblings understood how stupid and worthless we all were. I'm not kidding. It was pretty bad. I changed schools every few months as a child, and so no teachers ever got to know me. By the seventh grade I was legally blind, at 20/350, but no one realized it, so despite my high score on standardized tests, I was so lost in classes that I was placed in the slow group in Ottawa, Canada, where they did do tracking. I have an unnamed learning disability, which causes difficulty in orientation. I have a terrible memory, and I tend to focus so intently on things that I miss a lot of what's going on around me. So, despite the fact that my scores are higher than 9/10 of the rest of M3nsa, I don't have that feeling of superiority. Mostly, I feel a little lost.
I am fully aware of all the things I don't know, and those things seem more important than the things I do know.
I do notice and do comment on the stupidity of things I find in the news and on the internet and TV, but I am fully aware that most people notice those things. There's nothing special in that. The only way I'm special in that regard is that it seems to bother me more.
(My latest bears are "site" when they mean "sight", and "peak" when they mean "peek". That kind of confusion causes a short circuit in my brain, because with the learning disability, I read very literally, and that's a hitch in my git-along, and hurts my head.)
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June 9, 2011 - I changed the title of this post and edited it a bit because it was attracting more notice than was comfortable. Unfortunately, it's still out there in cache. Checking to see if it would still turn up in searches, I found this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2557059/posts. The comments are especially funny, like "...smart people quit M3nsa very quickly when they realize paying a substantial annual fee gets them virtually nothing but the chance to stand around at informal gatherings with a lot of underemployed whiners who constantly complain that the world refuses to recognize their brilliance". Oh, yeah!
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