Inside The Maze of Genius

Not all neurons are firing.

It’s kind of a miracle I make it through the day.

I was incredibly jealous of my son’s texting me all these fabulous icons that I DON’T have on my more advanced generation phone.

And then, just this morning, I realized, ohhh you swipe sideways.

Seriously? No one is this dense.

The examples are endless. Here was my brilliant money-saving milk-buying strategy. I did a big shop over the weekend because I didn’t want to have to go after work.

BUT, I forgot the six half gallons of milk we need. I figured why spend a whopping six dollars on a Peapod delivery when we need so little?

Why throw away all that money when I could pick up the milk at Stewarts’ Fresh Market in New Canaan while my boys are at band?

Sounds reasonable, right?

Except, given the boutique market nature of Stewarts, the milk itself is probably a combined six dollars more. This occurred to me on my way in.

Oh well, who cares? I thought, so it’s a break even.

Six aisles later with hand-rolled granola, tomatoes with farm-stamped organic certification, pink sugar crystals from the Himalayas, coconut encrusted tilapia and fresh sushi– the six dollar savings was kind of moot.

Now, THAT’S strategic thinking.

I mean, what kind of person makes up strategies for six-dollar savings anyway?

Especially when they are simultaneously buying Aztec Earth clay on Amazon to achieve smaller pores?

Seriously?

My husband frequently asks me if I’m sure I didn’t come with some kind of instruction manual or general guidelines.

He says he finds my thinking to be unorthodox, original, creative!

If I am feeling particularly emotionally balanced or we are doing some kind of home improvement project together, he’s more straightforwardly calls it … upside down and backwards.

This unique way of thinking can be especially challenging when, say, I draw up my landscaping design plan and hand it off to be considered for imminent implementation.

This is usually followed by Joe turning the page around a few times, asking where the front door would be in such a scenario, and then eyebrows innocently raised, asking if I’m pretty sure it’s drawn to scale.

Why think small when there the world is so big? I say.

He always agrees. We’ll just let the town and neighbors know we find the set-backs and property lines confining and rigid and we’re just going to redraw them.

It’s an underappreciated genius– the upside down and backward kind.

BUT, they (the brilliant scientists) will discover probably in the not too distant future that these rather unlikely modalities of thinking are actually signs of a rare and highly remarkable kind of genius.