She hath begotten a poor wise man to her sorrow

Dear diary,

The problem with life is that it means nothing if you’re isolated, and you cannot avoid being isolated without acquiescing to mediocrity. Mediocre parents believe that bearing a smart child means they can sit back & relax: surely the child will raise itself, thus they’ve hit the jackpot. But it’s the opposite: a smart child needs more care than a mediocre child. A smart child is the same as a slow child, one who’s below the average. All the systems of human existence are geared to serve mediocrity; and this is not a problem: this is passable; however, if you are the guardian of someone who’s either above or below that middling line, it means...

It means that you can do whatever you want. There are either consequences or not. I have no answers: I’m only a dreamer inside of a dream...

Yet as I started out saying, life sux when you’re isolated; and being smart means being alone. (I’m focusing on above-average kids rather than below-average kids, because I think the disadvantages of being below-average are pretty well known already.) Now, since the opposite of isolation is integration, it’s every smart child’s aspiration to become a genuine posse-member. But because all parents are mediocre, nobody helps the smart one find any certified group that’ll take him. So he’s left to his own devices. And his devices are evil, since that’s the label given to all deviations from the norm by the greater society (which is, I repeat, merely average by definition) — take a common example:

A smart child is abandoned in an empty aisle, as his mother is engrossed by the Christian magazine section at the supermarket; therefore the child finds his way to the exit, and then wanders in the direction of the piano teachers convention, which is happening at the music store next door. He stands in the entryway and beholds twenty-eight young female musicians sitting at the benches of their respective instruments. Now the young boy, being smart and lost in the world, asks if he may become a member of this cult, since it has a gorgeous look to it (all collectives are gorgeous, provided that they keep themselves dressed to the nines); and the ladies welcome him warmly and sincerely. However, when he begins to play upon the keys, his improvisations offend the ears of all the convention (the boy has invented the newest form of jazz), so the members vote to rise from their benches and move as one in the direction of the lad’s wicked instrument, & use cuttings of sackcloth to mute its hammers, so that his playing may be confined to the abyss; and then, with the rebel effectively silenced, they fold directly in half a sheet of pasteboard, thus makeshifting what is referred to as a table card (also known as a place card or seating card), on whose surface, in calligraphy, within the frame of its decorative border, they inscribe the word “Barbarian”; & they place this card on the cover of the youth’s piano, after they close it, so as to label him.

Then the boy’s mother, Mary, enters into the music store and shouts “Have any of you piano teachers seen my little lamb? I arrived at the market with an hundred in my charge, all average creatures; but one was smart, thus he escaped; now I’d like to find him and bring him back into the fold; I’ll use my rod and my staff to ‘comfort’ him — and here you’ll notice that I’m winking, to indicate irony: for in fact I intend to lead him to the slaughter, and he better pretend that he’s willing and not make a peep.”

So the teachers at the piano convention turn over their prisoner into the hands of his mother, Bloody Mary; and he becomes the perfect sacrifice.

(You’ll note how doom caught up with the lad & dispatched him, all on account of the way that he improvised on his keyboard. It’s that high-water mark of intellect that scares the blank out of dullards.)