FEEBLE-MINDED? IMBECELIC?
...really? Could that be me? A crash-course in self-analysis...
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I've been thinking about my life a lot lately as I am slowly winding down this decade of my existence. I think of dreams I had that are gone and desire that was wasted. From the beginning, I always wanted to work in a radio station; I had the dreams and desire, but I wasn't very good at it. I didn't have the personality or the voice for it. I had a first-class broadcasting license, I had a lot of interest in the media, I loved working in radio, but it didn't love me back. I'm a high-strung person with not a very thick skin, which didn't help out at all when irascible bosses treated me unfairly, or made me feel really bad at what I did, because my personality never allowed me to be relaxed when I was on the air. I tried and tried to get better; I did everything I could think of in order to advance my craft, but it just never happened. How something I loved could hurt so badly, and in the end, I was always made to feel inferior in the business. It just didn't work out for me. I have a few friends on the internet that work at radio stations, including one who works at the station I used to work at, and I'm insanely jealous of them. It was a business that I loved. Oh well, huh? I just didn't have what it takes. And you don't need a broadcast license for that. In a last stab at trying to make it at that radio station (which was in my hometown), I tried doing all of the work no one else wanted to do, foolishly thinking that I was at last Relied On. Hah. My hours got cut due to station politics. It wasn't to be. 
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I remember 9th Grade Algebra Class. I fell behind the first day, and fell behind further and further each day. The teacher would throw all of those formulas up on the blackboard, and they just confused me. I just didn't get it, no matter how much I voluntarily stated after school while the Algebra teacher unsuccessfully tried to make me understand it. The same thing happened with 10th grade Geometry; I barely passed, and I just couldn't learn it. I couldn't, and not for lack of trying. I remember back in 3rd grade, in math class, and we had begun to learn "borrowing" in subtraction problems. And that left me thoroughly confused. I Just Couldn't "see" it. I'd stay after class, and though my teacher tried to hammer the concept of 'borrowing' in my head (where does that number come from in which I borrow from the sum...where is it?) I just didn't get it. Finally I did get it, when all of a sudden, it "popped" in my head, but not after undergoing a lot of anguish that none of my classmates went through.
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Whenever I've participated in card games (such as "Hearts"), I could understand it to a point, after which I couldn't advance my game. I just never understood the strategy. I took violin for three years in grade school, and for the first couple of years I did okay, but the third year was just awful. I never could figure out what key I was in...the amount of "sharps" in the sheet music is supposed to tell you that, but I could never commit that to memory. Again, I could advance 'to a point', then advance no more. And, ironically, "Orchestra" class was held twice a week, in the mornings. So, in order for me to take a Violin Course I was fast losing the ability to cope with, I had to miss Math Class twice a week, which made me fall even further behind. I used to work in a grocery store, and I loved every minute of it. Until, that is, when I turned 18, and would have to operate a checkstand. All of a sudden, the job I'd had for the previous three years turned into something of a terror-filled existence I didn't want to work at anymore. The customers, I felt, were watching me to make sure I didn't screw them out of any money. Hell, I don't know what people are thinking...
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I play guitar, and love doing that. But...I can't play a disciplined 'scale' to save my life. Anything lower than the "G" string, and it's total guesswork for me. Luckily, there's a non-technical way to play, through the use of chords, otherwise I'd smash my instrument into the wall and never pick it up again. I've found the ability to play another way, but will always feel like I am incomplete on the instrument until I can learn those scales. And when I do manage to play a scale, I get lost in all of the strings, putting my fingers on the wrong string, which means I end up picking on the wrong string and no sound comes out. This is frustrating! People are supposed to love what they're doing, at least in their hobbies, but my guitar-playing hobby always tells me that I will never be able to play exactly the way I want to. I've played for close to FORTY YEARS, f'cryin' out loud (!) and I STILL don't get it. It seems that in everything I do, I can progress "to a point" and then my progress stops no matter how much I beat my head against the wall.
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Rosemary Kennedy

I've been reading Doris Kearns Goodwins'  "The Fitzgeralds and The Kennedys", an intriguing and well-written history of two important families in American Life who combined to form one of the most noteworthy chapters in our country's Political Life. Joe and Rose Kennedy's daughter, Rosemary (sister of John, Robert and Edward Kennedy) was "slow" as a child. The family decided, at least at first, to hide Rosemary's disability by including her in all family activities, and describing her to the press as being sweet, shy and quiet. Later on, Old Joe Kennedy tried to "fix" Rosemary's brain by making her undergo a frontal Lobotomy, which only made her worse. Up until that time, mother Rose Kennedy tried her best to make sure "Rosie" could get every advantage there was, which didn't work. She lived the remainder of her life in a Wisconsin Clinic, apart from any family contact. 
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Back in the day, writes Kearns, "defective" children were branded as "idiots", "imbeciles" and "feeble-minded". It turns out that the American Association for the Study of The Feeble-minded "elected to call them 'Morons' (from the Greek Word for 'fool')", and that's the class Rosemary fell into. The text continues, "To the untrained eye, (morons) could talk like anybody else as long as the conversation didn't get too complicated, and they even could jog along after a fashion for several grades in school, learning to read and write and to do simple sums." That's exactly how I feel these days, straining to be a part of society, trying to fit in. Sometimes holding a conversation with someone takes all of my energy, and I get mentally Worn Out. I am definitely hoping that I'm "feeble-minded" rather than being a Imbecelic Idiot, but sometimes I don't have any control over that. And maybe there's a fine line between the two states of mind. There's hope though. I can still eat an ice cream cone without getting any on my forehead...
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I've written about a lot of things in this blog, but I've rarely crawled inside my brain to try and analyze what's going on inside. Sometimes when I read things, I'll get hit hard by what I've read, and that's the case here. So am I a moron? Feeble-minded? Perhaps...all I know is, while I seem to find a way to exist...it gets lonely in here sometimes.