Smart is a relative term.

Early indications that I might not have the goods are not hard to come by.

There was a time when I would watch my mom shake the thermometer before taking our temperatures and think she was shaking the germs off it.

My oldest sister might tell you how I bounced into her room (which was NOT ALLOWED) and began singing along with the Carly Simon record she had playing, "you're so brave," I crooned. And my sister shook her long hair at me in disgust. "It's you're so vain, jerkface now get out of my room." And as she shoved me out the door I stuck my tongue out at her and said, "there's no such word, zit face. You just made that up."

In seventh grade as I stood with my girlfriends (such as they were junior high being the seventh circle of hell and all that) smoking in the bathroom before class as we did every morning, I found myself blowing smoke rings into the face of my math teacher. I wasn't really concerned since she was going to have to bust all of us. It took me a few seconds to realize that all my friends had ditched their butts at the sound of her approach and I was the only one still standing there puffing away.

Clueless? I prefer spacey, oblivious, unmindful.

I wish I could say that during high school or perhaps college, the synapses in my brain snapped into place and my prediliction for humiliating stupidity ended. Helas. At best, I have been able to keep this behavior out of the public eye and had to suffer this idiocy in privacy such as here and here in more recent times.

And if you think I'm not altogether now, fifteen years ago I might have really got you to wondering on how I was going to navigate the harsh reality of this cold, cruel world as (due to the constant partying and chronic emotional self-flagellation) I was pretty much of a wreck.

It was 1989, (I put that in for those of you like me who got the fifteen years ago part, but might have trouble figuring out exactly what year that was) I lived in Cambridge, MA and had a job at M.I.T. where I worked with smart people who, in hindsight, I feel rather certain kept me around just to make themselves feel even smarter.

On the Friday before Thanksgiving, Sue, the woman who worked next to me was worrying that she had to go to her boyfriend's parents' house for Thanksgiving and was told to bring an apple pie but didn't know how to make one. Now Sue was a mystery to me. She was lovely, dark-haired, dressed to the nines and smart. YET. Yet, her boyfriend was a complete loser and she ended up wasting four years with him before he dumped her for some lame-ass reason. Now I ask you, how could she be so dumb? I knew Howie (yes his name really truly was Howie, I'm not making any of this up) was a total waste of time the minute I met him. Sue was smart. Really, Ivy League, highs SATs smart. It hurt my brain. But, in that moment on that Friday I said to her,

"There's a reason they say 'easy as pie'. I can show you how to make an apple pie, no problem." (Which is kind of an interesting thing for me to have done since I had never made a pie before, apple or otherwise-- so it's safe to say that what I lack in brains I sure as hell make up for in moxie, chutzpah and wild, unfounded self-confidence).

So Sue made a plan to come over to my apartment that night and as it happened, Genevieve and Jody, the two uber COOL girls who also worked with us but were way way smarter and hipper than us heard what we were doing and said they wanted to come, too.

And I was all like. Wow. We're all going to be friends. This is the beginning of my own Sex in the City years (although I couldn't have actually thought it like that cause Sex in the City didn't exist back then, but you get my point).

So they came over and we got very, very drunk on white wine and I made the absolutely most awful apple pie ever. (Read: hard, blackened crust with a watery, uncooked apples center) Fortunately, I could tell Sue that it turned out this way only because I was drunk and not because I had never made one before. But, it didn't matter because in the course of our drinking and talking and failed pie-making, the question was raised-- what's everyone doing this weekend.

As it happened, a friend had invited me up to a party in New Hampshire but I hadn't even responded because honestly? At that time in my life? She might as well have asked me to a party in Juno, Alaska. It was just that far away. Still, it was the only thing I had to offer so I tossed it off as if I was actually considering going.

Genevieve (yes, her real name), a tall blonde whose mother was Belgian, said, "oh, I'll go with you if you let me drive." This was too good to be true. The reason I didn't want to go was I could never get myself there. (If you are wondering why, please reference #8 on this post).

But Genevieve had just bought a car from a friend and had the weekend to test drive it and needed somewhere to go. Can you say fortuitous? (Can I spell fortuitous?)

And so on Saturday morning November 18, 1989 with the blonde and beautiful Genevieve at the wheel, we high-tailed it up I93 into the wilds of New Hampshire. . .

. . . to be continued tomorrow-- this is a long story and I have to get to work.

got 2 cents?