[ QUOTE ]
I just read an article. It said that smart people can have poorer social skills. This was news to me. Are there reasons besides the one documented in this article that such would be the case? What is Asperger's Syndrome?
http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Smart-...&id=642758
[/ QUOTE ]
This is a great post for me to tell a story about how my genius brother figured out how to read at the age of four without any help from anyone ( other then my mom who taught him how to tell time and read time ). When we were kids, my brother and I liked to watch certain programs such as Star Trek. Only my dad, coming home from work, would grab the little pamphlet that he called the TV guide and explain to us, that woopsy - daisy boys, Star Trek isn’t on tonight, we’ll have to watch ( fill in the blank whatever my dad wanted to watch ).
My brother called BS on my dad and when my dad was in the kitchen or bathroom, my brother would switch stations and sure enough, Star Trek was on. It was then that my brother asked my mom how to tell and read time, which she explained to him. At this point, he grabbed the pamphlet called the t.v. guide and would associate patterns of letters with names of t.v. shows at various times. He did this every day, and I was completely in the dark as to why he was so interested in adult scribblings on pieces of paper. By the time my brother was in first grade, he could read any book. My parents called it a miracle of God. To hear them tell the story, my brother was born with the ability to read, but I knew better.
At any rate, throughout my growing up years, I constantly called my brother an idiot and a moron, because he was mentally unbalanced. He was given a full ride academic scholarship to BYU, but wasn’t able to graduate, simply because he can’t relate to people at all.
I now know that he suffers from schizophrenia, and I am hugely humbled at what an idiot I am for not recognizing his genius as I was growing up. My own friends recognized it and shared their stories of my brother. For example, my brother is one year younger, but he was bumped up in math to my grade. My friend said he sat behind my brother and always copied off him in tests. One day, my brother sat at his desk, so consumed with a novel, that he didn’t bother answering the test questions, so my friend filled in the questions the best he could, handed in his test, then reported, that my brother, at the last five minutes, set down his book, filled in the test, and scored a 100 percent.
As stated, I feel constantly bad at the grief and anxiety, as an older brother, that I must have caused my brother by ridiculing him for his complete lack of social skills.