The Fifth Wall

I keep hearing people using the term “commom sense.” They seem to imply that it is the end-all state of intelligence. Did you ever ask yourself how accurate this is? What if Einstein just had common sense? What if the Wright brothers excelled in common sense? Thankfully Mr. Edison’s strong suit wasn’t common sense. The fact is that those who possessed uncommon sense are the reason we, as a species, have evolved and progressed far beyond the planet’s other inhabitants. After all, it makes perfect common sense to me that we gained by their thinking outside the box.

I have a terrible problem in that I am a huge fan of condescending humor. To me it exposes the human frailty in each of us. The truth is I am pretty fair about being the brunt of of this type of humor. The big BUT is that there is a time and place for this. There are people that think they can blurt out whatever they are thinking just to get a laugh. If you aren’t at a certain level of familiarity with someone, you can’t go around acting like you have license to joke at their expense.

As a little boy, I was so impressed with my uncle Pete’s personality that I found myself emulating his every move. You see, my father worked a graveyard shift and I spent very little time with him. He would be missing at family affairs and most of my childhood activities. My uncle Pete was always the life of the party. The beautiful thing about him was that he loved us all with his entire being. Whenever I told him how much I loved being with him, he would say that everything he learned about enjoying family and people in general was taught to him by my dad. My father was the eldest of 10 and assisted in raising his siblings since my grandfather also worked a night shift when the kids were growing up.