I’m glad I’m not that smart

Dear Jessica Brennan,

Webster’s dictionary describes a genius as an “extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity” and “a person endowed with transcendent mental superiority”. Yes, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and of course as you and I know only too well, the one and only Peter Brennan. Genius is such a superior trait that the likes of you and I won’t ever really understand it. It appears in fact that you can get away with just about anything if you are one. How many times have you said, “You won’t believe what my dad did today”, only to be cut off by some loyal supporter who reminds you in wrist-slapping, hushed tones, “He’s a genius”. Like when you were ten and he took you to the mall to return his black, Bakelite, rotary phone to Bell…did I say “return”?.. I should have said “exchange”, after all as you may remember, “That’s the last phone that worked right in this house”. Anyway, back to the mall where he was dragging you by the hand shouting, “Buy! buy! sell! sell!”, into the heavy receiver with the curly cord flopping around. Don’t worry, no one noticed you, it was Saturday afternoon.

Sometimes geniuses make you feel, well, smart. Let’s not forget that just last week with genius fully engaged he drove by me three times when he came to pick me up from the dentist. Finally I started walking home up York Street, texting him to tell him where I was. He didn’t have his phone with him – Bakelite or Samsung, so he had to drive home to check his text, then left his phone at home again to come and find me. No one walking home, who was supposed to get picked up by someone who had now driven by them five times would ever send a second text. That’s just silly. You don’t have to be a genius to figure that one out.

In one remarkable moment of genius he paid several thousand dollars to Revenue Canada on someone else’s account, because partway through writing down his social insurance number he got distracted and finished it off with the last four digits of his bank card. These are those moments when you’re glad that when the grade six teacher asked your parents if they could put you into the accelerated program, they said no.

The most famous story of course occurred in the middle of a summer night at the stop light when a young girl asked our resident genius, “What’s your name” and he replied “Who’s your daddy“, because that’s the right answer. “If she’d said, ‘She loves you’, I would have said ‘Ya ya ya'”, was his indignant defense. “Stupid girl”.

We do love our genius, and his eccentric ways. The way he tries to eat the plastic grass at the sushi restaurant, and how he gets that little wistful smile when we mention “Peter world”.
All those good times during summer holidays at the picnic table doing times tables, and maps of the world taped to the dining room wall. The beleaguered school principal who got the regular calls telling him he should be ashamed of himself for what he was dishing out in that school of his and the look of excitement on Dad’s face when you started getting 100% on the math video game (which had nothing to do with math but simply with you outwitting the program). We never had the heart to tell him the truth.

Many years ago at a point when the future looked a bit grim you observed as only a child can, “I know you’ll be okay Mum but if Dad can’t do music, what’s he going to do?” And this is where we do envy the genius. The man who only ever does one thing because that’s who he is.
Toronto writer Ian Welsh once wrote, “Genius is also about obsession, about living with a subject till you breath it, till it’s obvious to you.”

We love how he can arrange music, watch television and have a nap all at once and how he tolerates us during things like games of trivial pursuit. We love that with his particular brand of genius also comes a childlike wonder and curiosity about just about everything, and an unwavering commitment to the way things ought to be.

Oh here’s one for you Jessica…What foreign government contributed the greatest amount of money for the relief of victims of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake? (insert impatient toe tapping and a sigh). Anytime Jessica.

Love Mum xo