Special

"If I were retarded, you'd tell me, right?"

That's the question I asked my dad while we were at the gym, a few days ago. This was followed by a very loud snort, which was then followed by a hearty guffaw.

His answer: "We all have our deficiencies, Hal."

Not quite the concrete answer I was looking for, but true enough. The thing is, there are times when I really wonder if I'm retarded. No, not in the derogatory why are you so retarded?! type of way. No, I literally mean mentally-challenged, "special."

Which leads me to ask a question: Do mentally retarded people know they're mentally retarded?

There are so many things that I don't know about that a lot of other people with less education know about. And this is no insult to them, but sometimes I wonder why my brain just didn't absorb all of the stuff that theirs absorbed. Am I slow? What's the deal?!

I mean, let's take computers for example. I am constantly asking Derek if the simplest thing like, oh, say, putting a disc or something into my new laptop will break it. He just stares at me long and hard and says, "of course not!" like I'm some mongoloid.

Another prime example of me possibly being a short bus candidate occurred just today. I was bored and drawing on my hand (that's a hint all by itself!!!) when my pen (one of those fancy fountain pens!!!!) dribbled some ink onto this really bad cut I got from when I was chopping tomatoes the other day. I looked over to Christina and I asked her, holding my finger out, "AM I GONNA GET INK POISONING?!?!"

Her response: "Yes, yes you will." Turd.

The truth of the matter is that most of my deficiencies or lack of knowledge about everyday things have less to do with being stupid or retarded than it does about me being paranoid, afraid. It's true! I'm terribly afraid of things breaking or getting sick or even just good ol' death!!

I think that will be another goal for me, for the second half of '07. I need to learn to stop sweating the small stuff or, at the very least, accept that there are some things that are beyond my control (there's that Plan thing again, eh?). I also need to start researching things that get me so high strung. The more I learn about things like computers and various illnesses or whatever, the less "deficiencies" I'll have, the less likely I might be to freak out about them and feel retarded later on.

And wouldn't that be special.