Gordon Rowe, one of my benchmates here at the Westside homeless veterans’ shelter, is a bona fide genius. He has a photographic memory. He remembers everything he’s ever read and is able to access that information, no matter how obscure, ‘on the fly’ while standing on one foot at the Benched Players Bench, smoking a Marlboro and holding down three different conversations on six different subjects with three different veterans.
It’s the damndest thing I ever saw.
Gordon’s I.Q. must be at least 30 points above mine. I have a hard time keeping up with him most times we talk. It’s like his mind is spinning at 9600 rpm while mine tries to record and process his information at 7800 rpm.
The difference in processing speed not withstanding, Gordon and I have an empathetic relationship. It’s a little lonely being intelligent here at this vets’ dorm. This place I’m living in is run BY subliterates FOR subliterates.
Most of these yahoos couldn’t spin their minds up to 3300 rpm on good day with windage, so Gordon often has to use me as a translator at the benches because I happen to speak Subliterate.
I also speak Moron, Addlepated and several regional dialects of Shithead.
Gordon and I had a minor disagreement today concerning who is smarter. I said it was he. He said it was me. This might sound like a pretty stupid conversation for two homeless bums to be having in a shelter for indigent veterans, because if you measure intelligence by the size of our bank accounts, we’re both a couple of dumbasses, BUT, my blogger family, you must remember that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Gordon and I were just trying to amuse ourselves today with the pecking order of smarts in this dumb, dumb place.
I told Gordon today that I had been relieved back when he first arrived at L.A. Vets. Very relieved. By the time he arrived, I was already dead tired of trying to help people think.
In the land of the deadheads, intelligence is like currency and there was always someone trying to bum a dollar or an answer from me and I was getting really drained from all the brain leeches hanging out in front of the computer room waiting to attach their problems to my mind.
I was very tired of their panhandling. Panhandling rides in my car. Panhandling bucks from my wallet. But most of all, panhandling free rides past the puerile puzzlements of their drug-shrunken pea brains.
Joilla! In comes Gordon, the answer to my prayers for relief! A new answer man had arrived for the bafflements of the L.A.Vets’ shell game.
Actually, it’s a Three-Card Monte game that the con artist casemanagers play with the vets here, but I couldn’t resist the convoluted pun on the old Shell Answer Man commercials that used to run on TV shilling the idea that a gas corporation could solve all your problems. I thought the pun appropo because I live at a corporation that also shills the idea that getting their brand of “gas” is the answer to all a homeless vet's problems.
I know this all sounds so very arrogant as if I think my shit don’t stink, but let me assure you that I do know that it does. Comparitively, though, in this particular dorm of reeking assholes, my butt is a breath of fresh air, Lilacs in the spring, Boganvilla on the terrace.
Tags: Department of Veteran Affairs, Gordon Rowe, photographic memory, on the fly, Benched Players, Marlboro, rpm, homeless, veterans shelter, U.S. Vets, homeless veterans, stupid conversation, measure intelligence by bank account size, one-eyed man is king, L.A. Vets, answer man, three card monte, the shell game, boganvilla, jarvis, marquisdejolie, corporate shill, Revver, viral video
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