Maybe it's because I was kicked out of French Immersion after six years of staring at the linoleum portable wall when I should have been listening to my teacher lecture about feminine and masculine nouns. Or were they verbs?

Or maybe it's because I rushed home after school for four years straight to watch Geraldo and shunned the other kids who were busy being productive with uncool things like after-school activities. Panels of fourteen year old transvestite prostitutes and kids with tongue rings (these dated issues did once make the talk show circuit back in the day) were far more important than enriching my mind and being active with hobbies or sports. Once my hour spent with Geraldo was over, I'd scamper up the stairs and lock myself in my room to listen to Tarzan Dan count down the top six at six. I was cultured.

Or maybe it's because I never stuck up for myself in grade school when kids told me I was stupid and my mom was stupid for telling me otherwise. Or maybe it's because when my "best friend" Fiona forced me to touch her cat's litter box shit, I did it because why would I think I should do otherwise?

Maybe that's why I feel stupid sometimes.

Don't you ever feel stupid? I do. I have all my life. And I'm not telling you this to get some sympathy or pity. Feeling stupid is mixed in there amongst my many emotions and moods and feelings I experience. Feeling stupid is just as normal as say, feeling drunk after downing 12 Jello shots because they taste good. Or feeling aroused watching Jimmy Fallon do the Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live. It's just something that comes over me. Quite often, in fact.

And just like there's different kinds of love—like the kind you have for your parents and the kind you have for butternut squash—there's also different kinds of stupid. There's the silly stupid—the kind you feel the morning after you've been shot down by a boy who's at least five years younger than you but you keep trying to pursue him because you were too drunk at the time to judge otherwise. And then there's that hopeless stupid where you just don't understand something, not matter how basic it's explained to you. Though I struggle with both types of stupid, it's the latter I'm most familiar with.

Like in third grade when we were learning how to do addition, I sat there and watched Madam Roberge bring the little four over to the second column and somehow a new number appeared. Huh? I stared at the blackboard as a security blanket of tears flooded over my eyes. I didn't get it. I felt stupid.

So if you feel stupid enough of the time and believe you're stupid, you eventually become stupid, right? I don't know about that.

I made it through grade school and middle school and two years of high school with satisfactory marks. Passable but not outstanding. Then I switched to an alternative school that endorsed students to work and learn through discussion. Elaine the English teacher even taught a nature writing class that encouraged students to become inspired with the beauty in simple things like trees or pavement. Desks were arranged in circles rather than rows. Students were sometimes allowed to mark their own work based on an honour system and my oh my, it was wonderful and I certainly wasn't feeling stupid any more. I was giving myself good marks and soaring through school and, for once in my life, I was a good student and I had confidence and I wasn't stupid.

That's until university.

In university they don't let you mark your own work. You're surrounded by people who seem much smarter than you and were accepted on the same B+ level average as you were but talk well beyond their years and you sound so juvenile and less-developed and you realize you have no direction in your life. And man, do you ever feel stupid? It's back to that third grade addition and those uncontrollable, unwanted tears.

But why dwell on this feeling? This stupid, stupid feeling. It's common for dyslectics to read "stop" instead of "stupid" (I wouldn't call that a coincidence). Why should feeling stupid stop you? It certainly hasn't stopped me.

Being a writing major, I've chosen a field of study where stupidity can be mistaken for creativity. Writing gives you the freedom to do that. So if I'm writing something that some would consider stupid…say a piece of fiction or a stage play—I can say that I'm trying something new, something fresh. You can't do that with English or politics (though some, I'm sure, would choose to argue otherwise).

And on top of everything else, when I'm feeling stupid sometimes, my mom tells me I'm special. And my mom doesn't lie.

So though I might get that overwhelming feeling of stupidity, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm a stupid person. (Though after reading this, you may very well choose to think otherwise) It's a facet of my life that I've learnt embrace. The scarecrow in the wizard of Oz was able to make it through the entire film without a brain and was still completely comprehensible. Eloquent even. I figure I've made it this far in my life, feeling stupid isn't going to get in the way now. Scarecrow did get a brain in the end.
That's got to mean something.
I have a brain.
Oh rapture.
Oh joy.