Make it up as you go.

Sometimes I wonder why on earth people think I'm smart. And then I remember... except for my professors... they generally don't think of me as smart. I do not, as a general rule, exude smartness. Yes, I get good grades in school and do quite well in that small department of my life, but that is the extent of my brain's capability. Beyond school, my brain goes on frizzle if I try to make it work too hard. Perhaps it's too much school use... yeah, that must be it.

For example, I can ace a test in psychology without studying. However, I cannot find my right slipper half the time. But my feet are cold, and it is better to have one cold foot than two, and so it is a common sign in my house for me to have on only my left slipper. To walk through one's house in a bathrobe and one fuzzy pink slipper does not exude intelligence. Morgan found my right slipper, under the bed... (uhm, our bed sits directly on the floor, there is no space under it, but I somehow managed to lose my slipper under the bed...) I was delighted to have two warm feet. By that evening, however, I had lost my right slipper again. Yes.

I do tend to lose things a lot... you can ask my mother and my husband, both will attest to this fact, both of them having quickly found the thing that I have spent the last half-hour searching for. Information is included in this mass exodus of items from my findable vicinity. I find a mixing bowl that is clean (not always easy in my kitchen), only to have lost my measuring cup. By the time I find it, I can't remember where my wooden spoon went... any of them (I have about 5). When I have finally assembled the items necessary, I have forgotten what I was going to make and have lost the recipe card. I kid you not.

I don't even know why I do well at school, because I am constantly losing and forgetting school-related things as well. My planner. My homework. My papers. My pencil (very common). My calculator (just in time for a statistics test). The recording of my voice lesson (brace for my voice teacher's lecture on the importance of those recordings). My ID card (for two chapels with no credit for them). My backpack. Yes, my entire backpack. It was in my cousin's room.

I am completely convinced that the only reason I do well in school, and indeed, survive at all in life, is that I am a very very good maker-upper. I make things up as I go along. Well, I might add. I do my forgotten homework in class and hand it in at the end as if I meant to do that all along. I get up and speak eloquently on a chapter I only read the title to. (Christological Heresies, I mean, how many can there be after all?) (I'll give you a hint: more than I thought) I beg a calculator off my statistics professor. I beg a pencil off a classmate. I decide that all along I meant to cook whatever recipe card I end up finding first. And I end up not failing completely. Usually.

I think those were all the thoughts I had for today... I'm not sure. I had something I was going to write about, but I forgot what it was, so I made something up.I come by it naturally. Ask my Dad and Grandpa.