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Nov
12
When I was a child, I tested into the gifted programs at my schools despite the fact that I never did my homework and thus consistently earned a bevy of terrible grades and at least one teacher’s public prediction that she was surely doomed to see me the following year as my chances of graduating from elementary school were so low. Apparently at some early point there was potential for my brain to be filled with useful information, but as I would continue to establish throughout my scholastic years, I am the sort who prefers to use a protractor for scratching my name into a wooden desk instead of measuring decibels or geography or, like, whatever it is protractors are actually intended for.
I squandered my young thinking-meat on Black Beauty books and making my Barbies rub confusedly against each other, then eventually on mopey English goth bands and a plethora of Saturday school detentions during which I once gave myself an abominable prison-esque tattoo on my hand using a needle and india ink which years later I eventually paid hundreds of dollars to have removed with painful lasers.
During college I majored in getting drunk, ill-advised personal relationships, and nicotine-coated Golden Tee arcade games. Among many other classes, I flunked Introductory Japanese, Graphic Design, Algebra, Life Drawing, and Accounting 101 with a resounding flush of my mother’s tuition payments.
Which is all to say, I have some personal accountability when it comes to my current intellect. The fact that I am shamefully stupid about any number of subjects—to the point where I cannot stand to watch Jeopardy! for fear of picturing myself somehow transported to the show and simply standing there with a line of drool escaping from my lower lip—has an awful lot to do with the choices I’ve made throughout my life. Maybe if I’d paid attention every now and then I’d be able to name the capital of North Dakota, identify Shakespeare quotes, or calculate a tip without producing a thin, acrid plume of smoke from both ears, but alas.
I will say, though, that I have long suspected that parenthood has slashed my already-meager I.Q. to a level on par with the box turtle. When the majority of your day involves strategizing how to most efficiently remove feces from the underside of someone’s testicles . . . well, there’s just not a lot of room left for loftier pursuits. I guess some parents chase toddlers all day and still read Infinite Jest all night, but those people are robots who probably never tattooed their own hand.
Plus, the lack of sleep! How can anyone retain anything but the most basic of motor skills when we’re operating on an ever-worsening sleep deficit? Sure, I can’t complete a Sudoku puzzle to save my life, but whose fault is that? Surely if I had a good night’s sleep—just one— I’d have a fighting chance at the intellectual pleasures I was once predicted to claim as my own, right?
Sadly, it is with a heavy heart that I tell you two things: 1) that during the last 48 hours I have slept over eight consecutive glorious hours at a stretch each night, and 2) while I was driving to work this morning, feeling mentally rejuvenated and ready to take on the world, it STILL took me 15 minutes to figure out the fucking license plate on this SMART CAR:
There is no hope, is there? And you know what’s even worse, is the knowledge that soon enough my kids will be bringing home homework—that I won’t be able to understand.
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Loving, Lately
JR Watkins Vanilla is my new favorite body lotion. Love the smell, love the way it feels, love the awesome label design.
I may have mentioned it once or twice, but Breaking Bad is the best thing that has ever happened to television EVER. You should watch it right now.
Bob Book Series
Riley has honestly learned to read as a result of these little box sets. Cannot recommend enough.
This applesauce bread from Allrecipes is superfast, supereasy, and the kids love it (I leave out the spices).
That license plate is funny.
But I totally get what you say about parenthood sapping what intelligence we have. I know I skidded through college and didn’t retain a thing. I am Donna from The West Wing where sometimes I need people just to tell me How It Is and What I Should Totally Think.
Right there with you – I’ve gotten much dumber since I had children. I have a masters degree in math & I can’t add in my head anymore.
Although I have an easy way to determine tip: Move the decimal point over for 10%, double that amount for 20%.
I’ve never been good at figuring out license plates – please tell me!
I made it a rule to never help my kids with their homework, because that is THEIR job.
Never mind – figured it out … God, I’m slow!
My favorite license plate was…
ELPMIS
The license plate frame said “Come on it’s simple”
I know what you mean. I worry about the all the things I once learned (some not very well) that I will have to relocate from the dark recesses of my brain once my kids start school.
Recently my four year old started asking me about colors, and which two colors mix to create another. I got as far as yellow and blue make green, and that was only with Ziploc assistance. I figure I’m pretty much screwed.
I have a hard time with license plates and other things where the words aren’t seperated out. I’m sure I would have looked at that going “What’s an asa whip? Is that a brand of whip?”.
The other day is saw a website that was http://www.shopelvis.com and I looked at it for the longest time trying to convince myself that “Sho pelvis” wasn’t a real thing.
It is, of course, an Elvis memorabilia site (but Sho pelvis is more fun to say).
Dude that license plate was HARD! You are good at writing, though!!!
glad I’m not the only “gifted” student turned mother of two toddlers that now has to use her fingers to tip the pizza guy.
Also have self-induced puncture wound on navel region due to about a beer and a half, chunch of ice, and the pin on the back of one of those huge smiley face
buttons.
Actually, the more I look at that plate, the more convinced I get that I would have thought they meant “ass wipe”.
Why are they bragging about being an Ass Whip? Or maybe they’re international manufacturers of a leading brand of ass whips?
What? I’ve got two kids, too. It’s not “ass whip”. Like an “ass whip” in an Italian accent? “Do you like my-a ass-a whip?”
God. I astound myself with my dumbness sometimes.
(I did eventually figure out that it says as a whip, but I lingered on ass whip for an inappropriate amount of time.)
What the hell does the license plate that “pete” posted mean?!
aaaaaaand I got it. so so slow.
Too bad I can’t get “asasieve,” but that’s one too many characters. I didn’t get elpmis, though, until I typed it just now…
Ass-whip? Wha?
“When the majority of your day involves strategizing how to most efficiently remove feces from the underside of someone’s testicles . . . well, there’s just not a lot of room left for loftier pursuits.” – LMAO – you must put this on t-shirts and bumper stickers and sell via Cafe Press. I’ll buy one in every color.
I also tested into the gifted programs when I was little. Then continued to get the speech that I wasn’t applying myself when I made it to Junior High and High School.
I am so worried about helping my Son with Algebra. He is in 2nd grade and already I can’t figure out some of his homework. I am horrible at math and he loves it, great.
I cannot for the life of me figure out license plates. Ass-a-whip? I don’t get it.
i have to thank you for being a truthful mom–it is great being a mom, but, man, are there some trying times. i’m tired of moms only saying how fabulous it is and leaving out the hard parts.
Wow, we are the same person. In first grade, they called my mom in to tell her she should test me for being gifted. All because I read at a higher level than my classmates. I just like to read. I, also, cannot calculate a tip w/o my cell phone. It took me almost 7 years to graduate from college. I am quite sure I am supposed to be smarter than I am. You are not alone.
When I first saw the license plate, I thought it said “asswhip”. I guess I also spend too much time staring at someone’s bare ass covered in poo.
If you believe IQ tests*, I’m a genius. I had to read the comments to get ASAWHIP, and use google to get ELPMIS. So you’re really not doing so bad. :)
* I do not, based solely on the high number of catastrophically poor decisions I’ve made. I wasted three whole years of tuition money with drunkenness!
I must be dumb because I can’t figure out Pete’s license plate. Man, I don’t even have kids to blame my breathtaking dumbness on. Crap.
Holy cow, NEVERMIND. I think I need to go study the dictionary now…or something. Oy.
had to call my 19 year old over to the computertofigure out elpis….yeah that’s drool dripping off my lower lip onto my keyboard…..WAAHHHH.
ok and I j spelt elmpis wrong….just shoot me now….
ELPMIS….Im signing off now, or hiring a proof reader.
My worst ever license plate was the one that parked next to me at my apartment for two years — “REVILO”. I puzzled over that every time I pulled into my parking space and every time I pulled out. Finally on the day Jean and Oliver pulled up in the U-Haul to move out, it snapped into my brain that it was his name backwards. DUH!
There is nothing wrong with your brain. You have not lost your IQ. You’re just busy.
OMG I got it!!!! Smart as a whip!! I cannot believe I actually figured it out, and I WAS sitting here with my mouth open staring at the screen.
Ok, can someone please tell me what Pete’s means? I see others have figured it out. Please post it. I don’t want or need to guess. :)
Okay so I finally got the smart asawhip one.
Stuck on the “elpmis”. keep coming across comments saying they too were confused…only to see they had solved it in the next comment without explaining. DUDES! seriously…help me..
I need to go study.
Although I now have a masters, I flunked out of high school in my junior year. My education has huge gaps in it. For instance I never got past negative and postive numbers in math. Also, I don’t know the first thing about science. Just avoid playing Trivial Pursuit and you’ll be fine.
ELPMIS…simple spelt backwards….
I did not get that until one of the other commenters said what it meant. I was all wtf does a saw hip mean? Asa whip? I think Asa is a name right? Gah, let’s just say the ability to figure out a license plate’s meaning has nothing to do with intellect. Right?
I paid attention in school, did my homework, got all As, went to graduate school… and still found myself puzzling over the canister of Fat Face at the coffee shop’s sugar/milk area. “Is that someone’s idea of a joke? Like an insult to the people who use the whole milk?” I asked these questions out loud to my coworker, who informed me it said “Fat Free”. Fat free milk. For putting in the coffees. Not FAT FACE OMG I REALLY ASKED THAT OUT LOUD.
Whoever wrote it could use some remedial handwriting lessons, but STILL.
I would like to say that (1) I got it immediately and (b) no medals dropped from the ceiling.
Also: (III) Where IS my medal?
I would like to say that Swistle’s blog comments are always, always, made entirely from 100% win.
Annnnd bah. Please ignore that random comma after the 2nd always.
AH, hahahahahaha, I laughed out loud at this. I don’t think you’re dumb. Anyone who can write awesome stuff like you do is at least as smart as that car. :)
Gifted to start out, dropped out of ninth grade, went back to college for honors and then law school and now I am dumb as a post, from working, parenting, and the not sleeping.
When I see comments by an internet person called Daysgoby, I usually see Dagosby and wonder if the monniker is meant to insult. I once read the name on a Coleman tent as Co-lemon. I don’t understand song lyrics at all.
I am not reading Infinite Jest.
My OB nurses said your IQ drops 10 pts per baby. I’m done, now.
My mom drove a Ford Edge – for a while, her license plate was “ON THE”. heh.
Your IQ drops 10 points per baby??
Octomom must be dumb as a bag of doorknobs..
Somehow I had the opposite problem. I’d like to think I’m an averagely smart person who somehow convinced most teachers that I was a complete dumbass until I got to college and actually had professors that paid attention to me.
I was in remedial reading, math-for-idiots (okay, I’m not awesome at math, but I kick ass at Jeopardy), English-for-non-college-bound-students senior year, and my own high school guidance counselor told me not to bother applying for college because he “didn’t want me to be disappointed.”
May I state once and all, for the record, that after talking a respectable university into admitting me under the condition that I could prove everyone wrong in 1 semester, I graduated Cum Laude, studied abraod at Oxford, and went on to get a graduate degree in my field with a 4.0 GPA. I’m not trying to be a snot about it, but HELLO, ASSHOLES. Way to undermine a kid’s potential. I didn’t exactly return to my high school to tell Mr. Evil to suck it, but I totally should.
I got yours, but only because you dropped a hint for me. Pete’s however? No clue. Do you remember that show, I think it was called Bumper Stumpers? My brother rocked the house figuring those out and yet I kick his ass on Jeopardy. The Teen Tournament, but still. Different people’s brains see/interpret things differently.
My favorite bonehead reading comprehension examples happened within the same week (and I have no kids to blame either).
The first, I was driving behind a mini-van/small bus one day. There was a 8 1/2 by 11 (landscaped) paper sign in the back window that said:
TOUR
B U S
I looked at it and, and being so close to the US border, assumed it was Tour B from the US. I even wondered what Tour A was, and if they had a bigger bus. I blame it on the fact that they had full justified the sign, spreading the B U S far apart, but still. When it hit me, I think I actually looked around my empty car to make sure no one could have heard what I had thought, in my own brain.
Later that week, I was in a meeting with company higher-ups and expensive consultants. The PM had made a schedule with the initials of the responsible people indicated next to their tasks. LR for mine, etc.
I read the list and piped up “So who is A One One?
Answer: “All”.
Funny. I don’t remember you as portrayed. I remember you smart as a, well, you know.
HA! I had a horrible self-made tattoo with a needle & india ink too! Only mine was on my ankle. My high school best friend & I did them at a sleepover at my house when we were 16. Five years later, I paid a professional tattoo artist a nice hefty sum to cover that shit up.
Your childhood sounds like mine. I aced tests and papers, but did NO other homework in 12 years of school (had to in college, but that’s another story). I’m a spacy, distracted, lazy, professional procrastinator.
I’ve made a firm commitment to myself that I’ll get an ADD screening in January. I’ve been meaning to do that for four years, but, well, you know.
I was also in the gifted program, but actually kept up my 4.0 until I hit college, at which point I joined you in the drunkenness and poor relationship choices. That said, I have no small children to blame and still sat here for a full three minutes before I figured it out.
I… PMS makes you stupid, right?
You sell yourself short. I have always been very impressed when you sprinkle factoids like “spiders have pedipalps” into your text, and would have said that I thought you had a towering intellect.
Ha. I had to have a MEETING with my kid’s 2nd grade teacher… because I needed HELP explaining the math homework. The SECOND GRADE MATH HOMEWORK.
A saw hip? What? (Actually I am proud to say I got the car one in only a feeeeew minutes.)
THANK YOU SO MUCH, you people who posted the license plate answers. I had no idea . . . and it was driving me CRAZY.
Games/puzzles have never, ever been my Thing. I can parrot back all sorts of useless trivia, but that doesn’t indicate any kind of intellectual dexterity, does it? Clearly, *I* am not “smart as a whip.”
despite the fact that by this time tomorrow, I should have a PhD, I could NOT get the damn license plate. I had to look in the comments. Am going to fail my defense, be laughingstock of graduate school.
The only way I pay a Smart Car 15 minutes of my attention is if they have a confusing license plate that needs deciphering.
I was so sickened by my dismal grades (I took it twice) in my college Elementary Math class I had to pass to become a teacher, that I went to a counselor (paid! out of my own college-poor pocket)about it. He told me one thing that actually helped. He said that ALL people have holes in their intelligences. Some don’t show theirs as much as others *ahem* but everyone is stupid at times. So, Stephen Hawking, if you are reading this, maybe you didn’t get the ELPMIS is the word SIMPLE spelled backwards either, did ya?
I called three people to help me figure out this stupid license plate (none of them got it either, and one of those three has a medical license). Finally, I gave up and read the comments.
Thanks, Eric’s Mommy!
So for all of you out there who are, like me, MENTALLY CHALLENGED, here it is:
Smart AS A WHIP.
Well, at first I thought it was some kind of Asian pronounciation for AssWhip. Then, you said SmartCar and it clicked right in!
Ha. I loved every word of this.
Once, I spied a huge, full-sized Hummer with SZEMTRS. I still think that guy was packin’ a roll of dimes.
I am sort of horrified that I got the license plate immediately, but it took me a second glance to realize this picture is in my neighborhood.
Getting good grades and being book smart isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I fooled myself into thinking those things would make me into something Great without my ever having to work at it, but the older I get, the more I realize that Greatness is earned, not given out with straight-A report cards. (For the record, I think you’re Great.)
I’m afraid the meaning of the license plate eludes me – if only it said asswhip-, but I found this: http://asawhip.com/
As far as you flunking classes goes, school is not designed for the gifted. Einstein failed subjects and exams…
Ah, reading comments now I get it. DUH.
Smart as a Whip Car.
#@!! – For 5 minutes my brain has been saying ASS WIPE. oy vey.
So…what are you saying about box turtles?
Kidding.
Yay! I’m so glad you got some sleep!
And haha, that license plate is great.
Just out of curiosity, what was the homemade tattoo a picture of?
Inquiring minds…
“Clever” license plates — especially when I can’t figure them out — make me a very particular brand of aggressively angry. I feel … duped, like they’re playing mental keep-away. Raaaaaaaaaar!
I laughed so hard at this entry..I feel the same way.
I wished I had paid attention to those life-altering events such as the Berlin Wall coming down, John Lennon’s death, Chernobyl…I was in my early to mid teens for most of it and must have been in a hairspray-induced coma because I remember very little of it all. Wikipedia, here I come…
The important thing is that whatever you did or didn’t learn in school, would have been stolen by your children anyway. So you enjoyed your time instead of blew it LEARNING only to give it up now with the birth of your children. I am 100% certain that I’m dumber now than I was 7 years ago.
*That* is what the internet is for!
Last night for the 11 yr old I had to find the deffinitions and differences between “weathering” and “erosion” (weathering is when the rocks are worn down by wind and rain; erosion is when bits break off and, you know, ERODE) so I could be helpful in him making a poster explaining them.
I get panicky when Trivial Pursuit comes out, and I’m a year away from finishing my PhD. I don’t know how I’ve made it this far in school, since I don’t even know how to do long division.
REALLY. I don’t know how to do it. I, too, was a “gifted” child who didn’t really retain knowledge so much as show promise and was passed along with A’s that I didn’t technically deserve. I left high school at 16 by LYING about credits I didn’t have and convincing a college to take me without a list of prerequisites. I’m smart, sure, in my specific field. But I’m so, so dumb when it comes to the basic knowledge that every middle schooler should have.
So when TP comes out, I get jokey and sweaty and defensive. I can’t answer basic questions about geography or 7th grade science and thus look like a complete DUMBASS.
Oh yeah, and now I’m trying to write a dissertation on baby/breastfeeding brain, and I’m a shadow of my former dumbass self. I didn’t have the brain cells to spare!
LMAO!! This is perfect. Do we really lose 10 points for every baby?!
right with you on the whole “sucked my brains out” thing. How do you fail graphic design???!?!!?!? JK – I failed intro to journalism =|
Somebody once told me that its not about knowing the answers, its about knowing how to find the answers.
Now I google. Therefore, I am brilliant.
My second child is four months old, so currently I’m dumb as a box of hair. Yet the people I work with (all of whom are child-free) keep interacting with me and giving me projects like I have a brain. HA!
Yeah, I thought it said “ass wipe” at first glance.
And I giggled.
Let me just say there is a reason why the tv show, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader made all the adults look so dumbass. I have a 5th grader, and search engines have become my best friends. Just wait until the boys start school. Like I remember what the heck I learned in 5th grade, or 4th, or 3rd… It’s a whole new world!
If it makes you feel any better at first glance I read that license plate as ASSWHIP. Which really is funnier than ASAWHIP…
Love the license plates! (I am a freak as far as ability to figure out word puzzles go, though.) My favorite one that I’ve ever had was on my Camaro SS: EZ2XLR8. ;-)
just checked out your pics.
love the Pixies.
But also, I am from Nova Scotia, Canada, and as of late, we have had some bad publicity regarding one particular Coyote. Love your capture of Wiley E. Coyote.
dude. I had to read through a few comments and use context clues to figure it out.
I used to be smart.
When they’re not backwards.. or missing a word. I CAN FIGURE THEM OUT. (SZEMTRS and EZ2XCLR8).
My mom has a vanity plate which says PAPPION.
Papillon but missing the Ls. Still pronouced the same way (the Ls give it a E-on sound being that it’s french and all).
Here’s a phrase that totally justifies how STU-Pid I feel sometimes: “You’re smarter than a box of rocks, if some of the smarter rocks were removed first.”
These are generally the days when I’m looking at a text from my niece and trying to figure out 1) who LOL is and 2) why are they in this story???
It took me a while to figure out the license plate, too. And I was always in the gifted programs at school and now I can barely add up my score when we play Yahtzee (I always lose at Yahtzee, BTW). I tell my son that the brain is a muscle and you have to exercise it or you lose it, but if that’s true then my brain is as fat as my ass, and that is not a place where either body part should be, in an ideal world. I hope that is just a Parental Lie I am telling him. I don’t want to be mentally inferior to the old me.
I think social skills go down the tube with brain cells when you have children. They must be stored in the placenta. That’s the only way I can justify my newfound lack of memory and ability to connect with other human beings over the age of 5.
We parents, particularly those of us known to be not exceptionally learned, end up appearing like idiot savants when we unexpectedly whip an answer out of thin air.
Here’s to exceeding low expectations every third Tuesday.
I definitely think that the further out of school we get, the less we use the skills we learned there. I’m certainly guilty of that.
I did get the smart car license plate, but struggled with the one Pete posted.
There is a car always parked outside our local Sears store. I figure it belongs to the owner because the license plate says MRSEARS. For the longest time I thought it said Mrs Ears but I think it’s Mr Sears. For some reason Mrs Ears makes me laugh everytime I see it.
I realize this is late in the game to be posting comments, but I thought of you as I drove into work today, behind a jeep with a Tweety Bird tire cover and the license plate “NOSHOES”. You have to understand, I teach high school. And so the first thing I thought was, “NOS HOES”!! and I’m off and and ranting about sexist a-holes who can’t even spell “HO” correctly… and then I realize that it probably means “NO SHOES”. Sigh.
Is that supposed to say asswipe? I don’t get that license plate.