Brain Pride

I simply hate the thought of coming off as unintelligent. I still cringe when I think of a paper I wrote 20-odd years ago in college where I used "illusion" when I should have used "allusion". Yes, I still remember, because I wear my intellect like a flag and I feel like a traitor to myself when I let that flag droop in the mental winds. Brain pride is a terrible sin with me.


But isn't brain pride good? Isn't it better to be scrupulous in the demands you make of your intellect, even arrogant, than lazy and apathetic? That's my big complaint about students these days: they are not only uneducated, they don't care that they are. It's so sad...the first day of my technical writing classes I always asked my students who knew how to go to a library shelf and locate a book merely through the call number. I have had classes where not one hand went up; at the most two or three did, and they were all raised by students over 35. I mourn that. The ability to find a book, to debate whether I want to check it out, to discover it the way great explorers discover new continents is one of the most pleasurable in my life. I think it tragic that few young people these days can experience it, or even want to.

Books are an absolute passion with me. New, used, slightly worn, or battered like war relics I adore them. I can't go more than 10 days without hitting Borders, and pilgrimages to Half Price Books are as exciting as visits to holy shrines are to the religious. I don't know who the patron saint of reading is but he or she has been sitting on my shoulder from birth. If I could just get people under the age of 35 to start looking on their shoulders for that saint I would be thrilled.