mensa me

there were two segments on cbs sunday morning today about mensa, the high i.q. society [the segments are online here and here]. as a one-time mensan, a couple of things caught my attention.



in the first segment, two children who were mensa members were interviewed, a boy and a girl. the boy had on his name tag 'mr. know-it-all.' both children related what i already knew. it's not easy to be a gifted child. both children were picked on and encountered a degree of animosity from their peers because they were 'smart.' i know it was puzzling for me in elementary school, trying to understand why other kids didn't 'get it' or understand things in class when it was easy.



in the second segment, richard lederer makes the comment 'i believe it is possible to be severely gifted.' just after that comment was this from lesly sthal, who narated the piece: 'there are an unknown number of mensans with high-end autism or asperger's syndrome' noting the aversion to being touched [which i sort of got over] as the reason for the green and red dots on the name tags at the annual gathering [green dots, ok to hug, red dots, hands off].

watching the segments reminded of why i joined mensa, years ago. it provided a place i could go and find people like me. that never happened very often anywhere else, before or since.