Shallow v Deep

When S and I were in Helsinki, he says to me out of the blue, "Our conversations are really shallow." I asked him what he meant by that and he proceeded to try and say something about how he felt we didn't talk about anything substantial or important. I tried to get out of him why that was bad, and he tried to say he was just commenting not judging, but I think by bringing it up, there was an implied judgment.

I have always felt on some level my conversation is shallow. Sort of. In a way I think it is- because I prefer low humor, I like cheap jokes. I enjoy being silly. Of course, on another level, I only enjoy these things with my intelligent friends because whenever we say things in this way, there's a tacit acknowledgement of a deeper intellectuality. Oh, now I'm in danger of sounding stuck-up. Bear with me.

I went to a nerd high school. Only 250 kids accepted out of the over 4000 that took the entrance exam in NYC. You had to be in the top of your class just to qualify to take the exam. I got in. And I nearly flunked out my first year. You see, I had gotten used to skating by. School had never been challenging before. Study habits? What was that?


(nerd school)

I'd like to be able to say that I managed to turn things around, but really, I just became more proficient at my slackdom. More able to glean information and put things together and infer information. Every year after seventh grade my GPA steadily improved until I graduated as a solid 'A' student- who had no better study habits than when she started. I was just a lot better at being me.

But in order to do what I do, I have to have some relative amount of intelligence. It's just that I don't always enjoy putting it to good use. I'm perpetually lazy. Which I suppose relates to my last post about the green grass thing. Because I think that I am lazy, I also think that if I could just take the thumb out, I could be doing so much more. The problem is, doing more doesn't make me happy. I get infinitely bored when people drone on about things that are too intellectual. I can often follow these conversations, they just don't interest me.

I'd rather tell dirty jokes.

God I'm shallow. S was right!















(shallow)