I'm Not A Smart Man

I'm not a smart man. For years people told me I was. I was a "gifted child." A teacher once told me I walked around with a cocky grin like I was ahead of everyone else. How wrong she was. When I look back on my life I don't necessarily have regrets, just a sense of awe and wonder that I have survived this long being as stupid as I am. I once popped my jeep out of four wheel drive during a snow storm because the roads seemed ok and I was trying to save on gas. Of couse on the next turn I hit some ice. The jeep spun, hit a ditch, flipped up a hill, and then rolled down said hill. I wasn't even bruised. In fact the only injury during the accident was to my passenger, who got some bruises when I unbuckled my seat belt and fell on him.(Sorry Brandon). I suppose there is something to be said for the engineering of old jeeps there somewhere. But that was just the time I gambled and lost. There were so many other close calls. Not to mention falling off ladders, being electrocuted, falling down stairs, and having a barn door fall and miss me by a few inches. The list goes on. But where my stupidity truly shines is with people. I have a stunning inability to read people or really understand them at all. I know I have insulted and offended many, many people without meaning to. What's worse is that it takes me years to figure out what I've done. I only recently figured out that a little over twenty years ago a really good thing stood right in front of me, vulnerable, and I was too stupid to see it. (If you are reading this and know what I'm talking about, I'm sorry. I was young, dumb, and oblivious). But therein lies the rub. Every decision, every mistake I have ever made, through stupidity, through luck, through the advice of others has lead me here. To my wife, my kids, my house, my minivan, this very blog that you are reading. Sometimes I wonder how my life would be different if i had made different choices. would I be a doctor instead of a historian if I hadn't talked back to that nun at St. Rose (Evwn though I didn't graduate from there, I made good friends and had too much fun, read stupidity, and I'm sorry to see it close)? Would I be a historian of I hadn't gone to see Nicholas Cage in National Treasure that night? Would I still be as messes up in the head as I am now? Would I matter? When I wonder this outloud I'm always told that I matter to my family and to my few remaining friends but truth be told I spend most of my time at work and it would be nice to matter there. I know people who matter, who's work changes how people perceive history. Sometimes they don't see it themselves and I get jealous. I'm fairly certain that I matter so little that if I just stopped showing up for work it would take at least a week for anyone to notice. Nothing I do matters As hard as I have worked I have changed nothing and I could be replaced without anyone missing a beat. And I have no one to blame for this but myself. My own stupidity put me right where I am today, a bitter old Civil servant, stuck in a dead end job, watching the clock tick down every day as I wish away the next 14 years and 7 months until I can retire. I think my time is past. People ask why I don't go back to school. I ask with what time and what money? People ask why I don't just change jobs. For one I would lose all benefits and retirement I have earned up to this point, for two my skills don't translate to anything else. I know what I want to do. I do have a dream job. But circumstances being what they are I can't do it. I know I could do it, do it well, and do it better than the people that have the job now. But I just can't do it. I know that being bipolar means that depression is always going to be part of my life but everyday I wake up, I force myself upright so that I can sit on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands and debate calling in sick but I know that that only makes things worse. I stumble into the shower where I cry as I wash myself. I cry. Feeling trapped and desperate will do that to you. Then I put on clothes that don't fit right and drive an hour to my job. I sit at my desk knowing things won't get better and at the end of 8 1/2 hours I start my hour drive home. I'm ashamed to admit that I rarely do more than the bare minimum because I know it doesn't matter. It's the same day in and day out. And again I can blame no one but myself. Every stupid thing I have ever done has put me here. What if I had interned in college instead of lifeguarding and getting a tan? What if I had turned down one job offer and taken another? What if I had taken the state trooper test before I got to old. What if I had joined the army out of high school like the recruiter pushed me to do? What if I had followed my dreams and moved to Hawaii to build surf boards? It doesn't matter of course. I can't turn back time. So I sit on a throne of stupidity created by no one but myself and wait for the clock to run out.

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