Being smart, like my wife, who was in the Top Ten of every class she attended: grade school, high school and college, is thought to be most desirable.
Let me hasten to tell you; it is also desirable to possess a low level of intellect. Take me, for example. One of the fun things a low-level intellect guy does for the amusement of smart people is to mess up words like too, to and two; isle and aisle; then and than; youth and “yute”; merry, marry and Mary. I use close, but wrong words all the time. I don’t mean to. It just happens. It would drive me crazy if it were not for the fact that I realize guys like me are needed to make the intelligence comparison possible. Smart people could not look intelligent without low intellects paving the way.
Another thing we lower intellect guys get to do is make up words. If we get to mess words up, we get to make words up. Someone in life has to make up words. That has been going on for centuries. From where do you think all of these words we use everyday come?
Here is a word I just created: pediamorphosis. Pediamorphosis is a little known phenomenon that began in the previous century.
Once upon a time we bought a book learning device called World Book Encyclopedia. We still have an entire set of encyclopedias in my wife’s book collection at the end of our hallway.
I remember my wife, a smart person, dropping her fork at the dining room table and running across two rooms and all the way to end of the hallway to retrieve one of these old fangled learning devices. She would then crack open the book and say, “See, here it is. Let’s read about it.” We would then learn about the particular subject that had captured our interest. Often there were photos, too. A guy like me loves picture books. Photos equates to less reading.
Now because I am a low level intellect guy, you might guess that I made very few trips down the hall to the encyclopedias. It was too far. It was too hard. It took too much time. You have to know your alphabet and match it up with the letters on the book spines. Finally, when you returned to the dining room table, you had to search in the book to find whatever it was I did not want to read about in the first place. I remember one occasion walking all the way over to the encyclopedias to look up giraffe. I grabbed the letter “J” volume, but cold never find what I was looking for, “Juraff”.
Things changed in a phenomenon I call pediamorphosis. Pediamorphosis favors low intellect guys.
We now have Wikipedia, which has taken over for the encyclopedia. Wikipedia allows a guy to hang onto his fork with one hand, continue eating and with a free hand thumb his iPhone. Presto, Wikipedia does all the room crossing, hall running and book searching. Wikipedia tells you what you want to know.
Now that is a metamorphosis. Ergo pediamorphosis.
In plain English our encyclopedia information source has changed rendering the old book style obsolete. I am hanging on to my encyclopedias until they bring big bucks on eBay.
Some of the kids growing up today may have never seen a 20th century encyclopedia. I wonder if Becky Huber, President of the Lakewood Historical Society, would like us to donate our encyclopedias to the Lakewood History Museum?
It was funny how I acquired our encyclopedias. While I was never in the Top Ten at school, I have always been a guy who knows how to get stuff. I still hold the record for the shortest encyclopedia sales career in Washington State. After breaking into the encyclopedia business, I promptly sold a set to myself and a second set to my neighbor, Em Stern. We both enjoyed the professional encyclopedia employee company discount thereby plummeting our educational investment to a minimalist level. Once our sets arrived and were on the shelf, as planned, I retired from encyclopedia sales.
Because I am a nostalgic kind of guy, I often move my wife’s iPhone to the bookshelf at the end of the hall. I do not tell her until she becomes curious about one of our dinner topics. It reminds me of old times to watch her drop her fork and run to the end of the hall so she can check something out on her iPhone Wikipedia.
Joe, that’s not too bad if you mix up words like “to” and “too” (equals four?). I like glaring instances of malapropism like the time a fellow next to me, who was complaining about the heavy exhaust fumes from a car. He meant to use the word “asphyxiated”, but instead said, “I’m about to get sophisticated!”