Learning Shorthand ...

At sixteen, Carmen joined Mensa organization. Only the top 2% of the nation's population are smart enough to pass Mensa's entrance test. Carmen breezed through with flying colors. Furthermore, when she got home she encouraged me to take the test. Said I'd have no problem passing. Said it was easy as pie. Uh-huh. That's when I first realized that Carmen didn't know she was different. I most certainly could not have passed. Those Mensa people would have seen straight through my empty head in a hurry, and I'd have been picking myself up off their sidewalk

In high school Carmen made straight A's without opening a book. She was seventeen when she quit high school, took a GED test, and began night classes at TSU. College was a little more challenging but her textbooks still showed no hard use and A's kept happening.
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She applied for a day job with Tennessee State Welfare Department. She needed to be eighteen. She told them she was eighteen. She needed to know shorthand. She told them she knew shorthand. That night I found her digging through a box of books in the basement.

"What are you doing, Carmen?" I asked.
"Looking for an old Gregg shorthand book I've seen somewhere." she answered.
"Why?" I wanted to know.
" I told those people I could take shorthand. Now, I've got to learn how before they find out I'm lying."
"Merciful God! Carmen, you can't learn shorthand overnight."
" Well, Mama, I have to."

Sitting on the floor in front of the TV, she opened a dusty book and began memorizing the same squiggles and curves I once spent two years learning. When the ten o'clock news came on she was ready with pen and paper. When it ended, she took her notes to the bedroom and typed up the report accurately and neatly. She was on her way!

When, one year later, Carmen left that steady job behind and traipsed off to Maine to pick apples, her employers were sad to see her go. She had been an excellent worker who turned out perfect letters with cool efficiency. No one ever found out the girl couldn't take shorthand.

Many years have passed since Carmen was a girl of sixteen. The winds of change are blowing hard and she is now reading instructions.

Welcome to the road most traveled, Carmen ... the road crowded with ordinary people ... all of us wrinkling our brows while struggling to make sense of instructions written by super-intelligent people who cannot understand why we cannot understand.