Are you ‘smart for your age?’

You may have difficulty in crediting this, dear reader, but I was once known as being ‘smart for my age’. Then obviously and inexplicably something went awry with the head cogs and all changed – but we’ll return to that in a moment.

In Johnstown National School, I was known for being smart for my age. ‘Tell him, Bernie,’ the master would invite when a fellow pupil failed to answer a ceist. My parents knew it and my aunts spread the gospel far and wide that I was smart for my age. I had such an interest in the English readers and history books that I knew everything in them two years ahead of when my class would come to it. I learned the capital of every country in the world just for fun. I received the highest marks in the Primary Cert exam and I even won a £10 a year Westmeath County Council scholarship to attend Castlepollard Vocational School. (I only stayed the one year.)

I tell you this, not to brag, but to ask if anyone can shine a light on how all this smartness for my age could go belly-up after walking out those school gates for the last time. At 18, I would have done well to consult with the ‘smart for his age’ eight years old me! And that is how the story continued.

Let me try to explain. I changed from being smart for my age to having the smartness lagging 10 years behind my actual age – if you get my drift like. Some of you smart readers might term this ‘hindsight’. But if only I had held on to being smart for my age, wouldn’t I have the benefit of that same hindsight right when I needed it most? It makes sense… doesn’t it?

All of my life I could look back and see clearly what I should have done differently a decade earlier. In other words, the smart for my age got stuck in a groove while the speedometer of aging kept ticking away. My smartness just didn’t keep up with my age.

I am curious to know how this was with you, dear reader. I ask because I had classmates in school who… how shall we put it… fell a centimetre or two below the water line that said ‘smart for your age’. But then many of those boys and girls got smart for their age in adult life – as my smartness went into reverse.

This has nothing to do with regrets, I hasten to add, but we have to call it like it is. Had I continued to be smart for my age, it would not have taken a decade to decide to dump d’oul demon drink. And shouldn’t I always have ignored any lies told about me instead of wasting valuable energy defending myself against people that didn’t count?

Sure I might even have continued my golf career and benefited from all the business they tell us can be won on the golf course – and I would always have known when ‘enough is enough’.

If I was smart for my age as a parent, I might not have always been quite as strict on my children and I could have been a more appreciative husband. I might not have taken some of my great friends for granted and I would have asked more people, ‘what do you think?’. That is what happens when you leave the smartness for your age behind in school.

I would have ignored the battles that aren’t worth fighting, learned to speak Irish and Spanish fluently, and I would have told more people how much I cared about them, before it was too late.

But halleluiah… as is often the case, you only have to wait long enough and the wheel turns again. ‘He is smart for his age,’ they said when I was going to school, but lo and behold, we are arriving in that category of smartness again. You see, I am now an octogenarian and a lot of people don’t expect you to know anything after you reach 80.

I can see how they look at me in wonderment when I make what someone considers a smart observation on Gaza or Graftonstown, or the difference between the moon and Mooncoin. At my age, you are sort of expected to be a dithering old fool, forgetful and speaking no sense about anything. ‘Does he take sugar in his coffee?!’

But it is like returning to my childhood these days with how they look at me when I contribute smartly to a conversation. I haven’t heard it yet, but it is only a matter of time until they are all turning to each other and remarking again; ‘he is smart for his age!’.

Don’t Forget

A man who knows his imperfections is just about as perfect as any man can be.