Lethal Brain?

I stopped stock-still on the sidewalk as something we had learned about in History came back to me. It was a section on feudalism than included the term 'noblesse oblige'. Roughly, it means that if you are lucky enough to be in a better position than someone else, due to factors outside your control, then you have an obligation to behave kindly and generously toward those not as fortunate as you. At the time, it seemed a silly, elitist idea, right up there with 'droit du seigneur', which meant that the lord of the manor got to screw the brides of his underlings before their husbands did. Was I operating out of a sense of noblesse oblige? It certainly looked like it on the face of things. It's unsettling when something you think of as purely academic and irrelevant suddenly turns out to apply to you. I had always thought of History like Latin and Algebra, as subjects that I was forced to study because they were part of the curriculum. I never expected any of it to become, you know, 'real'. "All we learn from History is that we learn nothing from History." I was proving Hegel wrong.

I examined my revelation even closer. Had I actually just drawn a parallel between my life and something I learned in school? Was this me, standing on the sidewalk in my school clothes with my bookbag, thinking about the philosophical basis for my view of morality and how it applied to correct behavior in social settings? I was a socially-deprived high school girl whose main concern up to this point in her life had been how to sneak out on a date or how much make-up I could get away with wearing.

Suddenly, something really scary did occur to me; something that explained why I was having all these strange thoughts. I understood for the first time that one of my mental powers was increased intelligence. I was actually getting smarter.

My classes today had seemed effortless, almost boring. I thought back and remembered that they had been getting easier for a week or so. I had attributed it to my enforced study regimen, but as I mentally reviewed my homework sessions, I remembered each chapter of each book, each exercise and each math problem I had done. I found I could recall each conversation I had had with every person almost as if I had a video machine in my head. My memory for the last week or so was nearly photographic. Although that term was probably misleading. The mechanism of memory was more likely to be holographic in principle than... STOP THAT! "Jeez, Louise," I thought, "Was this what it meant to be smart? To drown in digression? To endlessly overanalyze every thought? And wasn't I doing it again?" "GAAAAAAA!"

I hadn't been aware of saying that last bit aloud until Bud said, "Are you all right, Sam?"

"No! I mean, yes. Oh hell. Get me home before my brain melts and runs out my ears. I'm having an argument with myself and I'm coming out on the losing end." I remembered a moment ago making a play on words with Georg Hegel's famous quote. I was in deep doodoo. Any minute now I might be emailing Stephen Hawking to debate his position on the nature of spacetime.

"God!" I thought. "How do you turn it OFF!"

I looked at Neeka with desperation in my eyes. She said, "Your brain sounds like an engine racing with the transmission in neutral. You need a problem to apply all that intelligence to. I mean 'to which you can apply all that intelligence'. Shoot! I'm absorbing it from you. Being in your head is gonna make me smarter too. 'Intellect by association' — what an idea! You need to remember that your brain can be a lethal weapon, too. Don't point it at yourself.

"OK, your choice is either work on a problem or stop thinking. You were asking why boys weren't all over you today. Did you think about that before?"

"Yes. I decided to table the subject until I could conduct field interviews and collect some hard data."

"You mean talk to these bozos? You think they are a representative sample?"

"No, but they are the only boys who could be motivated to tell me the truth."

"Very well. Why not continue the research?"

"An excellent suggestion, Doctor Morgan." The research subjects were looking pretty lost by now. They knew we were talking about them, but they weren't too sure if they would like being research subjects.

"As I was saying before I got distracted, why am I 'out of their league'? Jim?"

"Well, the more beautiful a girl is, the more the guy feels that he has to be worthy, you know?" Jim said.

Bud jumped in with his two cents. "Yeah, and if you get brushed-off by an OK looking girl, it's bad. But if you get turned down by a real fox, it's humiliating."

"So the better-looking a girl is, the less likely she is to get a date? What's wrong with this picture?" The male ego was a truly convoluted thing.

"Good-looking girls go out with good-looking guys. It's like a law or something," Bud said.

"Well that explains you two," I said.

"Hunh?" Jim said, with an echo from Bud right behind.

"Well, I'm attracted to you. Neeka is attracted to you. The Hendersons are too. I think we're all above average in the looks department and we all think you two are a couple of righteous hunks." That got nice smiles from both of them. Flattery will get you everywhere when dealing with the male of the species, I noted. In fact, stroking a boy's ego was probably even more important than stroking his cock. I remembered how all that stuff I had said to Bud in bed this morning had really got him going. His ego kicked his cock into overdrive. I had always heard that boys thought with their genitals, maybe there was something to that. If I could solve the riddle of the male sex drive, that would be a problem worth studying. Finally, something on which to focus my new intellect!