Genius Is Only One Quality
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
There may yet be hope for of us yet. I read somewhere Albert Einstein was a late bloomer. I believe the article was referring to his scholastic ability, not the fact he wore billowy ladies underwear. The underwear was billowy, not the ladies. Well I guess the ladies could have been billowy. I suppose the more billowy the ladies, the more billowy the bloomers. Calista Flockhart’s underwear is so small as to be practically useless, while Roseanne Barr’s drawers are immense and were once used as the topsail on the Bluenose. But it really doesn’t matter. We aren’t talking about Einstein’s underwear anyway, although I might come back to Calista’s at some later date.
Albert failed his entrance exam to go on to high school, yet he still managed to end up as a professor at Princeton. Whether he was awarded the lofty position for his academic brilliance or the fact he caught the Chancellor in a parked car with the Dean’s wife, is unclear. But you can see what I mean about Albert’s early scholastic ability. If his massive intellect didn’t develop until much later in life, it’s possible you and I are just days away from becoming the near-genius your mother hoped for.
It wasn’t Albert was stupid as a child. He was just a little slow in some subjects. His ability to do sums was practically non-existent in public school and his English grammar was abysmal (although that may have been because he was German) but he was an absolute whiz at Show and Tell. So much so, photographs of his sister and her boyfriend on the couch were praised for their detail and led to Albert being named Head Boy and his sister sent away to private school.
You and I may very well be late bloomers just like Albert. At any moment one of us could come up with an advanced mathematical equation or some chemical formula that will benefit all mankind.
Quite frankly, I’m a little overdue for a burst of intelligence. I still can’t figure out how to change miles per gallons to kilometers per liters, which explains why I can run out of gas twenty minutes after I leave a gas station.
Albert Einstein has long been recognized as one of the smartest men of the 20th century. His famous Theory of Relativity, E=MC², is considered the single-most important discovery of our generation.
His formula shook the very foundations of the scientific world, or would have if anyone knew what he was talking about. His theory may hold the solution to many of the problems future astronauts will face as they attempt to travel to distant planets, which is amazing since Albert himself could rarely find his way home and was often seen standing on a street corner scratching his head.
Perhaps the greatest mystery of our time is why a man with the massive intellect of Albert Einstein couldn’t find someone who could give him a half-decent haircut. Why he chose to look like Harpo Marx has been the topic of conversation at every Nobel Awards Dinner since 1936.
Of course Albert may have looked quite spiffy by European standards. We know he was considered quite the little stud muffin among the female members of the scientific community. That is surprising really, since he was not exactly the handsomest man in the lab. Nevertheless it is no secret Albert had a torrid affair with Marie Curie, the discoverer of radium.
Mrs. Einstein, Albert’s long-suffering wife, was the first to suspect something when she noticed his shorts were glowing in the dark. The steamy affair became public when Marie’s husband came home early from bowling while the two of them were in the bathtub. Einstein got away by pulling the plug and disappearing down the drain. Marie was left to explain why she was sitting in an empty tub with two rubber ducks and Albert’s hat.
Like all great men, Albert was no stranger to tragedy. Friends close to him said he never got over the death of his nephew, Klaus, during an early attempt at reaching the moon. Klaus was last seen standing under a Titan rocket at Cape Canaveral attempting to the light the wick with a match. All they found after the explosion was a set of false teeth and a pair of slightly charred Argyle socks.
