All things considered, being clever is better than being dense. But cleverness has its downside. For one thing, no one believes a clever person. I spend about half of my day explaining to people that I’m not hatching a plot. You’d be amazed how often I have to say one of these things:
“I know this looks like the beginning of a practical joke, but this time it isn’t.”
“There’s no punchline. That’s what actually happened.”
“Seriously. I’m asking you to marry me. Stop laughing.”
Recently I developed a speaking disorder caused by nothing in particular. The best medical guess is that it’s something called a Spasmodic Dystonia or Dysphonia — a problem of the vocal cords going nuts on their own. The net effect is that while I can give a speech to a crowd of 5,000 people, I generally can’t utter more than a hoarse whisper to someone one-on-one. It’s like a stutterer who can sing okay but can’t talk normally.
It’s bad enough to find out that I’ll probably never speak normally to another person for the rest of my life. But to make things worse, my notorious cleverness makes people think I’m joking when I explain it. The following scene has been played out about 100 times in the past week.
Me (hoarse whisper): “Hi. How…are…you?”
Other Person: “Ooh, sounds like you have laryngitis”
Me (hoarse whisper): “No…it’s a… speaking disorder. It’s.. permanent.”
Other Person: “Ha Ha Ha Ha! You’re funny.”
I worry that someday I’ll be injured in a bad accident and the first person on the scene will think I’m kidding. He’ll see blood spraying from an open wound, recognize me from some speech I once gave and say, “That’s cool! How are you doing that?” I’ll try to correct his misconception, but my voice will be inaudible unless he happens to bring along 5,000 friends and a microphone. Then I’ll bleed to death.
No, seriously.