the curse of creativity

People assume that if you are creative, you are thus intelligent. Which is usually good, but is sometimes bad. Why? You can't ever get a break. I've heard all of these: "You're reasonably intelligent, you should know better..." or, "you're so smart, why don't you go to medical school instead of wasting your brain on art?", or, "why write a book; you're smart, you could go to college and get a real job." Sigh. And of course, "you're a smart girl, why didn't you study harder; you could have done better than a 'B'." What, am I supposed to be Einstien? :P

Now, had I had been truly intelligent, I would have hid any signs of my creativity, and pretended that rocks were fascinating. Thus, I would have avoided the great pain of being expected to be perfect.

So anyway, once in awhile, I'll make a statment that floors people; they'll think I'm not stupid enough to get away with it. Which for me, is rather unfortunate.

For instance, I said I had inherited the "blonde gene" (and was therefore ditzy) which inherited the indignation of my (obviously smart) blonde readers.

Let's see: My mother occasionally has been known to do ditzy things - I do ditzy things. She couldn't have inherited it from me; however, I may have gotten it from her. This is a reasonable assumption, based on the fact that people can inherit intelligence from their parents. What, apparently, is NOT a reasonable assumption is that it was from a "blonde" gene, which was taken to be a discriminatory and politically incorrect statement. :P Hmmmmmm, my father has exhibited the gene for pattern baldness, which he says makes him more intelligent. Something about brainwaves being to powerful to make hair growth conductive. Which brings me to conclude that I DIDN'T inhereit my so called intelligence from my father. If I had, I'd be bald. :P

Furthermore, genetically speaking, it would have been impossible to inherit a "blonde" gene from either parent. My father had a dominant gene for Brown hair (which he exhibits), and a co-dominant gene for red hair (we can assume this, since he was a redhead as a baby). My mother is a redhead; therefore, she carried the co-dominant gene for red hair, and both must have given me the gene, because, voila, I have red hair.

A good friend pointed out that there are many intelligent blondes, which would disprove the long standing joke of blondes being less intelligent. But of course. My best friend is one of them. So, her husband makes red head jokes, since he can't make blonde jokes. But I know he's joking. Well, he better be. If he was serious, I'd have to get really, really mean. I'd have to tell a brunette joke.