Miss Pickwickian,
Dare I see that the relationship has improved?
The condition of your birth, choice of reading matter, are no longer mentioned?
Yes, he does have a hidden agenda behind the words about college, but he is limiting his subject matter.
I think you define him well, lacking internal satisfaction, which comes from matching your life path with your interests, and becoming the best cake you can make from the ingrediants.
For those who do not dare walk the path they were given, fear seeking personal satisfaction in an unknowable future, where the outcome cannot be presently understood, life is replaced by a safe choice.
They trade failing to play in the big game, not even trying, for seeing only the competition of today, and meaningless small wins. Seeking only short term wins, seems to have ended his marriage, troubles his relationship with his daughter, and it is all blamed on, his failure to Major in Chemical Engineering?
Play to win today does not build a long term life. I think that more than family was lost to him due to his equating life with football.
It now takes everything he can put up to lose playing with an undergrown autistic kindergartener who didn't win the spelling bee and can't do anything right.
What I see is he cheated from the beginning. The Captain of the football team always gets passing grades. He won, but did not get an education. Now he says, should have hit the books, applied myself, and gone for a Degree in Chemical Engineering.
Lucky you are female, and even with this talk of equality, they have never started a female football league. Born male, you would have been molded into a football star, and failed, due to intelligence, and an interest in academics. You were spared a much worse fate by gender.
All that he has left are fragments of regret. Perhaps his heart was taken, or some other body part, by a cheerleader, and he made plans, had hope, thought of a future, but so did she, so she married a nerd who was bullied by the jocks, but did leave school with a Degree in Chemical Engineering, and a cheerleader.
His peak of life faded quickly. He had no job skills, companies do not want their nerds bullied. His education suited him to being a middle school football coach, he married a second string girl, then had a daughter, who turned out autistic.
What is wrong with her Doctor? "Well she is very intelligent, focused, intent, self directed, and prefers the reflections of peaceful solitude." Well cure her, give her drugs or something! While you are at it, could you turn her into a boy, and use steriods and growth hormones?
It was not to be, she grew and had ununderstandable behaviors, she read books. The worst was they were about life, but none involved football. They were the record of human behavior, where the convictions were upheld, the guilty executed. They were also about the potential for life in a civil socity, what constitutes proper behavior.
The worst was yet to come, those who got by with clever moves were written up as bad people. Those who used a short term advantage badly were hung.
His marriage lasted barely a decade, but those things come with continuing costs, and those who pay think they should call the tune. The problem being the highest goals they can think of, but know nothing of the reality, are old fields, dead ends, and life continues to grow.
Those who can't, complain.
To reduce him to a sentence, I do not want you to screw up your life like I did mine.
It is an honest concern, expressed as best he can. He did, and lacks the perception to see you for who you are, few could.
As Dickens would see it, none are responsable for the conditions of thier birth, for all that truely matters is good character and proper behavior.
Family ties expose you to very different worlds. You are judging him based on your own character, which is as flawed as his judging you. My reply to him and his world view would be, "Show me the money!" If you are hearing from Columbia at 16, let the bidding start. Here you have common interest, who will pay for your education. Posed as a competition, people bidding on his daughter, we can stall and wait for the winning bid. This reduces your relationship to a number.
He can only value you by his sense of value. Money is a lowest common denominator. You cannot be understood, but she must be worth something if people, strangers, are bidding on her.
The true Miss Pickwickian can only be judged by her peers, which are few.
The world has a place for most, where they are a natural fit. It has developed to accommodate a wide range of people. It is a tolerent system. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
For some, we have always needed a gallows, prisons, for they have behaviors that affect others.
Most find their place and just live.
For a very few, there is no place. Intil the recent development of Universities, there was no place for very bright people. They did nothing they could be hung for, but still seemed odd.
At first, gathering knowledge with no direct application seemed a waste, but it did keep odd people from wandering the streets, asking unsettling questions. Later it was found there were uses for knowledge, that could be applied to business and war.
The cause was unknown, but any could tell these were odd people. Only in the last hundred years has there been a measure of odd, called IQ. To the subject at hand, those with an IQ above 130, are of no earthly use.
To keep them from causing problems they were given positions at the University, where to all reports, they were quite content. Like the jail, work house, pest house, insane asylem, army, the University was a place to isolate types, and allow an orderly society to run.
As technology evolved some did leave, for there were new places in industry to fill that took in depth education. They were still odd, but there was no other choice.
Others were less useful, collected Degrees like other's collect stamps, some could teach, but others were fit only for laboratory research. They are odd, but treatment lead to them being transferred to the insane asylem. It was best just to leave them in the lab.
I would place you in this incurable group. High IQ, sees the advantages of being themselves, and has no desire to be anything else.
If you think MENSA is an intellectual slum filled with pretenders, I am right. They seek the top 1%, 3,000,000, and I think there are possibly thousands of intelligent people.
The only path open to you is education. College for you is only to get the credits and grades for Grad School.
Only you should chose your field of study, for it is you that is being educated, and you who will reach the edge of knowledge, and gauze into the abyss. The view is great, and infinite.
Some live in the past, some the present, and a few, the future.
You are great and becoming.
15 Mar 2008, 4:44 pm
