Thank You to V for Shaving off another Layer of my BS

For many years a friend of mine kept telling me that I didn’t know a feeling from a crescent wrench. She thought I needed to stop being so stoic and exercise my emotional body.  She said it was my frozen anger that was holding me back and encouraged me to beat on the bed with a belt. So I did that while she supervised. But I just felt stupid when it was over, because I was not angry at the bed. Many years later I have finally gotten in touch with my feelings, much to the dismay of the same friend, who is now telling me that I need to get a grip on my emotions and learn how to bear pain without complaining. Ah such is life!

Was my Daddy a prophet when he laughed and said I couldn’t win for losing? Or did he unintentionally put a curse on me?

When I was a toddler my cousin Freddie Jean sat me on the washing machine while she bounced a ball over and over. Watching her bounce that ball made me laugh. After a few bounces the ball went flying in another direction. Freddie let go of me for just a second to retrieve the ball, and I fell off the washing machine. The top of my head hit the concrete floor first. Everybody was worried about a concussion or brain damage, but I survived the fall and made good grades in school.

Ever since then my family has always laughed and called me a genius when I say something they don’t understand. Sometimes I will deliberately say absurd things to make people laugh. But other times I have no idea why they are laughing and I argue with them to try and convince them of the point I am trying to make. That is usually when people call me a genius, because they simply can’t understand what I am saying. My family gives the credit for my genius to Freddie, saying it is her fault because she dropped me off the washing machine on my head when I was a baby. For the first fifty years after I fell on my head, I liked it when the kin folk laughed at me and called me a genius. I just thought they were complimenting me on my intelligence, and presumed they were not smart enough to understand what I was saying. It isn’t just the family who thinks I am a genius, however. Other people do too. I have been called a genius too many times to deny it.

I always just say, “Thank you!” And I used to mean that, even though I know people are being cynical when they say it. But when I turned 52 years old Vulcanel told me that he did not intend for that to be a compliment, and I needed to look up the word genius, because they are idiots. So I looked up genius for the first time, and found out it was true. Geniuses are idiots. It was incredibly embarrassing for me to learn that I am an idiot. I cried for days when I learned that everybody had been insulting me all my life and I was thanking them. I also knew immediately that my particular brand of genius appears most often in the form of of gullibility and a whole lot of things started making ore sense to me.

Then I got a new lover who distracted me for a while. He admittedly couldn’t understand some of the things I said, but never once did he call me a genius. Having a lover made me feel normal again. I didn’t have time to dwell on all those thoughts about being a genius that had been racing around in my mind before I met him. I was enjoying my life instead of thinking about and wondering why all those people who have called me a genius thought I was a idiot at the time they said it.

Becoming aware that people have been insulting my intelligence instead of complimenting me caused a floodgate of unpleasant revelations to pour into my consciousness. The hardest one was realizing that my new lover was just playing me when he said that he didn’t want to be in a relationship with anybody. It very quickly became obvious because he made a monogamous commitment to somebody else, which left me with nothing better to do than go back to contemplating the fact that I am an idiot and the truth of what that really means. Embarrassing revelations have been coming to me ever since. I feel transparent to the point of being invisible at times.

In the past month I have told several people that Stacy Pool is a natural hot springs. I only said that because I am an idiot. Many years ago I had a boyfriend who used to go swimming at Stacy Pool every day after work instead of coming home. I was jealous because he liked hanging out at the swimming pool more than he liked spending time with me. I was beginning to wonder if he had the hots for some girl who was swimming there or something, but he said it was because he liked the warm water of natural hot springs and it was healing for him to go there. I believed it and have been telling people that Stacy Pool is a natural hot springs ever since. This week I had one of those embarrassing revelations that made me doubt what he said. So I looked up Stacy Pool and the website doesn’t say anything about it being a natural hot springs. I guess it should have been obvious all along because the place would be world-famous if it was. 

Revelations of my own idiocy have been torturing me ever since I looked up the definition of genius. I am triggered by ironies, paradoxes, cliches, sound bytes, similarities, synchronicity, and spiritual adages. It is very much like dropping acid with no hope of ever coming down. I was on the verge of tears all the way through my first Acro-Yoga class at Yogabatics because Grant was wearing a Bossy Flyer T-shirt that triggered me. One of the weird things I did to distract myself and sooth my own discomfort after realizing that I am an idiot was to create a new identity and build a new website to market my services. The new name I chose was Bossy Ryder because I am in the business of teaching people how to have better sex. That is why Grant’s Bossy Flyer T-Shirt triggered me. When I told him the reason why I was on the verge of tears all the way through his beginning class he I needed to meet Daniel Scott, because that is where he got the T-Shirt. He also made sure that happened by bringing Daniel to Austin and inviting me to take his Acro Yoga Teacher Training Course.

After the course was over I dreamed Daniel had to hold the entire class back and keep it very simple because I was there. In my dream the class expressed anger at me for coming because I was the obstacle that kept them from learning advanced stuff. I guess somebody always has to be the lowest common denominator in every group. But I sure hate it when it’s me. Whoever said “Ignorance is bliss!” was speaking the truth in that regard.

Two years after becoming aware that people have been calling me an idiot all my life, somebody accused me of hubris. I had never even heard of the word “hubris” before. Turns out it’s an indefatigable form of arrogance that was punishable by death in ancient greek society. Apparently I must not be integrating the fact that I am an idiot very well if it is making people wish I was dead. I have certainly been compelled to prove that I am smart person ever since I learned the true meaning of the word genius. The awareness must be getting pretty tedious for others, too, and not just me. It has caused me to start asking a whole lot of questions instead of just trusting what I am told. People resent being put on the spot. But when I simply trust, then I often find out how gullible I am. People say things like “I can’t believe she couldn’t see it coming!”

I began building a new website when the teacher training course was over. Yesterday I liked it. Today it seems like a stupid idea. But I am using my real name instead of Bossy Rider, so I guess that is progress.

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