Now about myself. Many people said me during my life that I'm erudite and that I have a strong critical thinking and logic... and even more said that I'm crazy retarded moron.
Nowadays, I meat people with the second kind of opinion more and more rarely (or, at least, they don't tell me it in face?). But I faced such a characteristic a lot in my younger years. I learned different so-called "difficult" subjects, like a math, programming, natural science etc., much, much more easily than the average people of my age (not talking about intellectual elite, of course; just comparing to the average). But, in the same time, it was very hard for me to learn some so-called "simple" things.
Just an example of the situation of that kind, after which people thought I'm irredeemable idiot:
One day, when I was very young, my grandma explained me how to clean the floor. She gave me a very old rag and told me, that I should make it wet and wipe the floor with it. "But, granny", - said I - "this rag looks so dirty and smelly. There are hair, dirt and other weird things on it. (showing her) How can it make anything clean?" (or something like this), because... Jesus Christ, the thought, that dirty thing can make something clean, really had blown up my young mind. Of course, she have become irritated. She started to wipe the stain on the floor with the rag in the front of me, as a demonstration, and she had shown that it was wiped out with the rag. "That's how it makes it clean, fool", - said she, - and gave me a rag. So I decided to stop irritate her more with a "stupid" questions. I decided just to make an exception to this particular rag and to believe that it can do the things clean, and just started to clean the floor, in the way she have explained.
Another day, she told me to wipe out the table. "How?" - asked I. "With the rag" - said she (but she didn't specify, with which rag exactly). I recalled that the rag for the floor makes things clean, even if it looks dirty, and started to move it on the table surface, "cleaning" tablecloth, dishes, glasses, cutlery... I was surprised that they seemingly became just more dirty after this. So I decided to wipe them harder... You can guess, how loud she screamed about what an irredeemable idiot am I, when she saw what I was doing.
I still remember it, because of feeling of shock and sincere misunderstanding, what have I done wrong.
When I grew up, I realized that my problem is, that my brain works inherently well with a formal logic, but have a big problems with understanding that vague, "intuitively clear" things, which everyone around perceived like "obvious". So I put an additional efforts to understand them. I started to ask people around "stupid" questions, despite of the risk of being mocked, because I really wanted to learn all of this.
For example, once I've asked my boyfriend:
- Why when I'm opening the door with the key, it feels painful, and when you're opening the door with the key, you don't look to feel pain?
Instead of saying "Because you are idiot", as my family members would say in this situation, he said:
- Show me, how are you doing it
I had shown him, how am I opening the door, slowly and clearly. When he looked at it attentively, he was surprised.
- Why do you squeeze the key so hard? Your hand becomes white and tremble from such a strong tension, when you are doing this! Of course, it'll hurt. - said he.
- But when someone explained me in my young years, how to open the door, they pressured my hand with very strong pressure, so I just repeat what they have shown me, putting all my strength into it.
- You don't need to repeat it in exactly the same way, how they've shown you.
- But if I don't put any pressure, the key doesn't move at all.
- In this case, try to increase pressure slowly, until key will start to move. The weakest pressure, from ones, which are enough to moving the key, is the pressure, which you should put in it the next time.
I did what he said and was happy, because since then I don't feel pain, opening the doors with a keys (well, if the locks are not very tight, of course).
Just for the reference: this talk happened, when I'm was 23 or 24 y.o. .... if you'll ever feel stupid, just recall this post. LOL
I don't know, why have I write it