I used to hang with a bunch of them. My favorite was Ed, not the Ed here who also happens to be pretty bright.
Ed looked vaguely like Bill Murray in a disheveled way, was a math major at PSU and took quite a bit of acid in his day. When you partied with him, he would be real casual looking with Berks, a baggy tee, his hip cocked in a slouchy manner and a beer bottle waving around gently at the end of his arm, almost carelessly but never spilled much to my recollection. He was a very good public orator and held no fear whatsoever in social situations.
For him and most mathematicians, math is a language. I never fully grasped its higher studies, but I respect it. I could flub around in basic algebra because its just logical substitution, but never went into the higher conceptual shit.
He told me once "The more acid I do, the more I understand math" Thats the same concept as why psychadellic era music is so mind expanded, because the people who are gifted in that craft to begin with are able to capture some of the illusions and recreate them musically to others who have not dreamed of such things.
His education and desire to be as proficient in his understanding of his craft melted into one core of genius as he dabbled in recreational psychadellics. He had a mad professor streak in him, too. Just because he wore Berks and fucked around with trips didn't make him a pure hippy, he was just a crazy slightly evil genius with a wide streak of sarcasm in him.
Partying with him was fun, because he'd always be on the fringe of being belligerant. He was freaky smart, and he knew it. He'd stand there being kinda quiet, throwing in his two cents and just being Ed, with a smirk on his face, pass the shit dude, it isn't a thing you hang onto forever, you know, he'd say. Eventually someone would drop a big fat turd of a comment, and he would wade hip deep into the middle of the circle and cut the whole conversation to fucking shreds, purely on the fly - total improv but always razor sharp even when amazingly wasted. He would hang the beer bottle out in space, like a coal miner holding out a kerosene lantern, illuminating the person with it in a slightly accusatory manner, then curling it back in to swig from it, in punctuation of his statement. It looked like a drunken Dracula being creepy and wrapping his cape around his face and backing away into the fog.
He was a year ahead of me in school, and towards the end of his college he came around less because thats how life works. We always had mutual respect, we were friends. One night we were at a bachelor party he was throwing at his sisters house and all sorts of people were there, strippers fucked on the floor and an angry old dog was scared at all the people in his house and was trying to bite anyone who tried to pet him. Somewhere in that evening we went and hung on the deck and told war stories while the party raged inside.
I confided to him that I was a little bored and upset that I'd wasted my chance to go away to college, he was having a great moment in his life in those years, nearly finished with a long complicated educatiuon. He basically told me that whatever I thought of college, it was not what I envisioned and most of the people you would live, work and party with were assholes and I wasn't missing much. The experience was the experience and the education was the education. Don't confuse the two. He goes Look, man, if you want to become more educated, do it. But all you need to do is be inventive and creative, and of all the people here, You'd easily top my list of people who are able to build their intellect without going through the bullshit of living elsewhere and existing on pizza and suffering through four years and a huge pile of cash while living like a bum. I'm paraphrasing, this happened long ago. Pretty much threw the whole damn thing face down on the ground and took a piss on it, while still respecting it. Plus giving me little validation in the process.
So, we made our way back inside eventually and one of the more distinct memories after that was my friend Jim who had just gotten a dishonorable discharge from the Marines bellowing at the top of his lungs "STOP PETTING THE FUCKING DOG, HE JUST WANTS TO WATCH THE FUCKIN' SHOW LIKE THE REST OF US!"
This dude, I had went on a month long road trip with a year or two before that, and in that whole fucking month, he never really mentioned school at all. I think he was a little down on the whole thing, when a student of ability is bored as a freshman, theres something wrong with the picture. To go all the way through it and have nothing better to say about it than "Some of the parties were great." Is a fucking shame. Looking at the whole big thing under a clinical light, you're paying for that piece of paper, and the geniuses of the world would still find a way to maximize their impact on the planet with or without it, thats the nature of creativity and productivity when matched against mensa people. To most people their professors or other elder people of knowledge would be considered to be more experienced and thus more advanced in that field of study, the superior of the student in that subject. To people like Ed, all they are is the equivilant of runway jockeys, using those orange flashlights to wave a jet into takeoff pattern, saying "You now need to go look and study into this direction, at your current level."
Unless, of course, he happened to really respect that one certain professor for some reason.
--
Is Ed a Mensa? I'm sure he could get in. But he would probably laugh in your face and say "Sure, I guess I'll sign up, how much will they pay me? Oh, nothing? Haha, I think I'll pass."
The last I heard of him, he was living in a major city doing computer work of some sort, probably writing software or some shit. He married one of the coolest girls I've ever met in my life, and I knew her very well. Also a great friend of mine, very pretty and very smart, an all around excellent chick. They had a kid or two and he abandoned his job and moved back home when his dad got bone cancer and died in his mid-fifties, way too young. He's probably doing very well by now, that was a while ago.
The Free Talk Live BBS
Poll
5 (10%)
Author
Topic: Mensa (Read 4032 times)