A Geek from Krypton

On College, Culture Shock, Potential, and Personal Failure

Author’s Note: The Nobel Laureate mentioned in this piece is already aware of the story. No need to bug him.

“Hey, someone just called for you! His name was like ‘Osh Kosh B’Gosh’ or something.”

Rachel, my older sister and at this time my greatest enemy, was doodling on her arm with a pen at the kitchen counter when she informed me of the missed call. I had slept in uncharacteristically late that day. The night previous, I had been acting as designated driver for all of my high school friends after our graduation party. Without writing a whole other story, I can only say it went late.

“That’s a kid’s shoe brand or something, isn’t it?” I yawned.

Rachel shrugged and I poured myself a bowl of cereal. She wore dark clothes the color of depression and I was still in my dress slacks from the day previous looking like a dork. It was one of those things that we did both accidentally and on purpose to show our opposite polarity. Sometimes, I think I hated her most for forcing me to be the obedient one.

This was a time of relative calm in our difficult relationship. I would be going off to college soon. She would have the house to herself. Our lives would naturally separate. It was easy enough to keep the peace for such a short period. Besides, I had no idea why anyone from Osh Kosh B’Gosh would want to speak with me. It sounded like a funny sort of scam... unless, perhaps, she had misheard the name?

The realization struck like a cymbal clash.

“Rachel… umm… did he say his name was Doctor Osh Kosh B’Gosh?”

I felt dizzy.

“I don’t know. He said he might not have time to call back because of graduation or something. He wanted to know what college you were going to. I didn’t understand it so I just hung up on him.”

She shrugged again, not seeming to care too much.

It was obvious what had happened, but part of me was still in denial.

“Was his first name Doug? Like Douglass Osheroff?”

“Yeah, I think that was it.”

The name meant nothing to her.

And so ends the story of how my older sister hung up on a recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Physics, who at the time of the call was the head of the Physics Department at Stanford, and who had wanted to talk to me about my college plans because I’d won a scholarship named in his honor.

I declined the opportunity to be gracious about this misunderstanding.

I did none of the smart things I would do today, like realize he must have gotten my phone number from someone. Then determine that someone was probably one of the science teachers who had awarded me the scholarship on his behalf. Then realize I could probably just reach out and arrange another call. I lacked the emotional intelligence to even understand this was a preferable approach. I was far more interested in the offense than a solution.

Instead, I ranted for almost an hour about superfluidity in helium and how anyone could be so stupid as to not learn the name of the only Nobel Laureate to have ever graduated from their high school. It wasn’t like there were dozens or hundreds of names to remember! Aberdeen High School had only ever produced two super famous people. We had Kurt Cobain and Douglass Osherhoff! That was it! Rachel had flunked out of high school a few years prior from a sheer refusal to attend, despite my having completed all of her coursework, but surely she should know at least that!

It was a sore spot with her, so I dug in without mercy.

This was probably the peak of both my perceived potential and also my arrogance. A few months prior, I received a letter in the mail confirming that I was also going to receive a NASA Space Grant Scholarship. It had been a foregone conclusion that I would win the scholarship from the high school math department, since I was usually the substitute whenever the Calculus teacher had to be out of office. An honor which didn’t win me many friends.

I felt like a character in a movie about overcoming all the odds, but in truth I was born with my intellect the same way I was born with my hands and had done nothing to earn it. It was pure dumb luck, a genetic throw of the dice. Everything in school came easy and I never had to make any particular effort to get good grades. If I’d ever had to try a single time, most of my many personal failures would have been a lot easier to spot a lot earlier than when I became aware of them.

I have written previously on my experiences of being big at a young age. That had significant impacts on my development. What I have not written about, because it is impossible not to be insufferable while doing so, is that I was also… well, this is just a real turd to type. To say it plainly, in my small, relatively isolated region of the country, which was also known for massive academic underperformance, I was smart.¹

Take this statement with two caveats. One, I’m pretty sure NASA had to give a scholarship to someone in my congressional district. Two, by sheer dumb luck, I happened to graduate from the same small high school as a Nobel Laureate. Both of these are cases of me being advantaged by slim pickings. I will spare you the several other paragraphs of apologetics I have written, rewritten, and deleted about all the other limitations of that statement that I now understand as a grown man. I no longer suffer from any illusions that intellect is a virtue in and of itself, anymore than I think being able to jump really high means someone is good at basketball even if they lack all other necessary talents. I am also painfully aware that intelligence isn’t a superpower that immediately replaces the value of experience or personal connection. The apologies have all been made to the people who suffered through it the most, and it would do nothing but soothe my ego to repeat them here. Suffice it to say, before I put down my anger and learned to move through the world with a modicum of humility, my intellect was probably the second thing people noticed about me after my height. With a chip on my shoulder the size of a mountain, I would find a way to make it obvious if none presented itself.

My intelligence was a source of no small amusement to people who knew my family, which in our small town was almost everyone. You don’t expect a brusque man who once plunged a cop’s head into a toilet for giving out too many traffic tickets to have an anxious son who is always carrying around legal pads where he’s been writing Fantasy novels and making up languages. My dad has “read²” four books in his entire life so it was weird I had a pretty decent library as a child. Or that a woman who genuinely believes that Karaoke will make her famous is going to have a kid who is working through the whole math textbook start to finish for fun. Even as an adult, while I’m no longer the smartest person I know, I remain by far the person with the highest parent/child intelligence disparity. Not only was I comically mismatched with my entire family, the logging culture of our community made all of my natural habits seem incredibly feminine by contrast. The general consensus was that I must be gay.