To Be Smart Isn't an Unmixed Blessing

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
May 12, 1956


   I WOULD NOT MIND winning $1000,000 merely by supplying a few right answers, as did Lenny Ross, the 10-year-old Californian who hit the big television quiz jackpot a while back.
   With that much booty to draw on, a fellow would be rather well sheltered against the darts and arrows of adversity, but I would not say that Lenny's worries are all behind him, even though he is unquestionably smart. One of the chief reasons he'll have trouble, in fact, is because he is smart. I have had contact with a few intellectuals in my day and have vicarious knowledge of their operations and sufferings.

   SOME FOLKS have a flair for mathematics, others for history, literature, geography or science. They are exceptional in one or two subjects and blanks in others. Not so with the real big brains, as Lenny Ross appears to be. They are good in everything. They have the intellect and also the will to excel. They can skim through history assignments and remember names, dates and places. They can tell you the capitals of all 48 states, what countries border on Switzerland, what the principal products of Madagascar are, and what Grant said to Lee at Appomattox.
   The rest of us read slower, re-read, and retain less. As a lad in school I could while away an hour reading about the Whisky rebellion or the surrender of Cornwallis and, come class time, know only that whisky was intoxicating. And I wasn't sure whether Cornwallis gave up at Yorktown or got clobbered at Manila bay.
   But once the intellectual fastens his mind on a subject it stays there. He is above distractions. The cute little blonde at the desk opposite might as well be in the next county. If there's any daydreaming to be done the smart boy reserves a time for it. It's not while he's attempting to prove that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

   STILL, to own a big brain isn't an unblemished gift. The intellectual has his weaknesses and must pay the price. Lenny Ross is a stock market expert and may remain one. He can tell you what companies split their stock at a 4 to 1 ratio last year, but 30 years hence will he be able to give the date of his wedding anniversary? Not if he's a typical big dome. The big dome cannot be bothered with such trifles. He is absorbed with larger things.
   They may not be things financial like mergers, articles of incorporation or when to unload those shares of Consolidated Tinfoil. It may be some wrinkle whereby the circle can be squared or invention of a contraption to ease the first olive out of the jar or a way to convert surplus wheat into insulation.
   While his mind is fastened on these big things he comes a cropper on the domestic front. He forgets family birthdays, fails to notice that his wife is wearing a new dress or hat or has been to the beauty parlor for a shearing job. He forgets that Aunt Hortense is arriving on the 5:38. He is not at the station to meet her.
   Such lapses can foul up the domestic machinery faster than failure to meet television payments, and cause a wife to wonder if she wouldn't be happier had she married someone they had passed through grammar school because he outgrew the seats.

   WE YOKELS of only moderate cerebral horsepower are trapped on occasions. We have our domestic lapses and spend bleak periods in the deep-freeze. But they are few by comparison. This is understandable. We have less to think about than does the intellectual. If we remember to pay the rent and taxes and bring home the bread and look busy when the boss is around and put gas in the car and occasionally mow the lawn we figure we're  pulling our weight.
   This still gives us time to remember that Sunday is Mother's Day. And we may not be too harried to realize that next Wednesday is Julia's birthday and that two evenings later the Crabtrees and the Whites are coming for dinner "so don't wander off to another ball game with Joe."
   It may be sour  grapes and it probably is, but I can't manage much jealousy for the fellows whose brains and ambitions give them no rest. They are the boys who blaze the trail of progress. We owe them much. I salute them and am thankful that we have them. But I can't envy them. I'd think they'd get awfully tired doing all that thinking--and spending all that time in the doghouse.


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TO LEARN MORE ABOUT LENNY ROSS, GOOGLE:
[what quiz show was Lenny Ross in during the 1950's]

Recommended reading is from the NYT article "The Early Death of a Bedeviled Genius"