Too Tall and Too Smart

I was a very bad girl last night but through some kind of miracle that I fully did not deserve, I was only mildly hungover today. And embarrassed. Severely embarrassed for reasons I will not go into here (you probably, and you know who you are, already know about it anyway) so let us gloss over the details and focus on one small but telling interlude: suffice it to say that among the evenings peregrinations I was told, nicely and in a more roundabout fashion, that I was too tall and too smart. I think, should I ever have a tombstone, that these words of wisdom should adorn it. Yes. I am too tall and too smart, which explains a lot, I suppose, although I'm not feeling particularly brilliant at the moment.

This is, of course, one of those defining differences between men and women: to wit, it is just not possible for a man to be too tall or too smart unless the height and brainpower verge over into the gibbous and peculiar, like he's 8' tall and so smart that he can only cringe helplessly in a corner reciting theorems in a crabbed and deadpan voice. I am not that tall or that smart, but I am a woman, and we're supposed to be short and dumb, I guess. Also blonde. (I like the way that article so blithely predicts the birth of the last natural blonde - it's hilarious.) You would think that these attitudes had died out by now. You would be thinking wrong. This is why I have been known to play scrabble with prospective suitors: the chances are good that I'm going to beat them, and the way they take that is quite interesting, because some of them don't like it - at all. Some of them think it's great - these are the good guys. They are few, alas, and far between, as are the guys who don't have a problem with a woman who is a few inches taller than they are, perhaps more than a few inches in those delicious Steve Madden shoes that make her legs look so incredibly fantastic. These men are dumb as posts, because tall women have great legs, can get the bartender's attention even in the most crowded place and, as if that's not enough, face it: everyone is the same height lying down.

Why anyone would want to hang out with dumb people is beyond me; they bore me and make me itch. It is true that there are certain situations in which brain power is not of paramount importance, but one cannot, after all, always be in the lying down position. And we're also over 21 now and presumably less in the grip of those hormones. But it doesn't matter; this is the world, and I'm too damn smart and too damn tall. Oh well. Osteoporosis will take care of the tall in time and you would think I'd burned enough brain cells by the application of liberal amounts of alcohol to be dumb by now, but apparently not. Thank the gods. I think.