David McElroy

I’ve always felt weird, but I haven’t always felt smart. When I was younger, I knew that teachers and IQ tests considered me very smart, but I felt as thought there was some horrible mistake. Surely I was going to be discovered as a fraud. I didn’t feel smart. I felt pretty normal and mundane. I simply felt as though I was surrounded by idiots who couldn’t understand very simple things.

I came to associate being smart with being weird, especially when I found that the people I liked best — who were also very smart — seemed to also be weird by society’s standards, in one way or another. Is “weird” just another way for the majority to say, “Hey, you’re different from us”? I learned early that other kids who weren’t in the “smart club” didn’t appreciate us.

I read an article last week about why being intelligent is difficult. For a lot of people, that might sound like an absurd concept, but it made immediate sense to me. I’m betting that most of the people who read here will understand at least some of the things on this list, because I suspect most of us here are pretty bright.

Take five minutes to read this article about why being smart is difficult. It’s short and it’s just a list of 10 things. The list evoked a strong reaction from me. I remembered feeling those things growing up. I also remembered feeling those things in previous jobs and with most of my clients. And I strongly identify with the list in my life today. Go ahead and read it. Then come back. I’ll wait for you.

Do you think the list applies to all people with high intelligence? I’m honestly not sure about that. Do all smart people feel those ways? Or are those feelings of alienation reserved for those of us who are very intelligent and “weird” in some way, too?

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“Ender’s Game” made me cry.

I don’t mean in the sense of openly weeping at the excitement of a hero winning his objective. It made me cry inside — and kept me teary-eyed — out of a sense of deep identification with Ender Wiggin. If you’ve ever been an outsider who wasn’t like the people around him, you might find yourself feeling deep empathy and attachment to the character of Ender.

I’ll start with the bottom line. If you read and loved Orson Scott Card’s novel, “Ender’s Game,” I think you’ll enjoy the movie version that opened in theaters Friday. (The trailer is below.)

The movie can’t go anywhere nearly as deep as the book did in creating attachment with the character, but if you already love the book — and couldn’t read it without feeling that parts of Ender’s story reminded you of your own story — the movie will probably evoke enough of what you felt in the book to be an enjoyable and emotional experience.

If you haven’t read the book, the movie isn’t going to be the same experience. Most of what’s important in the book takes place in Ender’s head. In the book, we get to know him. We experience his feelings. We identify with him. We become him. The movie can’t do that. (In an interview with Wired magazine this week, Card admitted that the book was unadaptable as he wrote it.)

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A few days ago, I asked friends on Facebook if they had had anything spooky or unexplained happen to them over the years. Here’s a sampling of the stories I received. Editing has been very, very light, in order to retain the original words and tone.

Let’s start with Kate Duggan, who’s a high school teacher in California. She shares a story from the house where she lives and then some strangeness from the school where she teaches:

I live in a house built in 1914. When we moved in 34 years ago, there was something…something…about the downstairs bedroom (which we made into a TV room).

No one wanted to be there after dark. Weird. Much later, when friends moved in to stay for a few months, strange things began happening. Lights going on an off (completely at random), the room being too hot at one moment, too cold at the next. My friends reported seeing stuff in the middle of the night. And these are friends who don’t believe in crazy stuff. Very, very strange. Another friend told me that it was a ghost. Yeah, right.

I got really sick of it, so I decided to do something. I went in and announced that whoever was there was dead. To go away. I burned salt and rubbing alcohol in a dutch oven and invited the “ghost” to move on.

“You are dead. Go away,” I said.

I swear that the next part actually happened: the lights went off — and it was exactly as if something lifted off the room. A presence or something. The lights went back on. I have never felt it since. My friends were completely shaken up — well, so was I. I have not felt it since.

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