All my life I have been, in some way or another, involved with “STEM” stuff (although some now add “arts” to make it “STEAM”). When you grow up short, skinny, nearsighted and timid, with the eye-hand coordination of a couple of rocks on a frayed string, academia seems a natural. At one time or another I have aspired to be a physicist, chemist, engineer or marine biologist. I got closest to the last. But the common thread was, I was interested in things that are generally seen to be the purview of smart people. And I was, frankly, pretty good at these pursuits. This got worse as I realized that academics was likely the only way I was ever going to amount to much, my only chance to stand out. It seemed like all I had, so I embraced it like a friend and lover.  I began to see such pursuits as the only real indicators of high intelligence.

Smart people can do or be many things.

True, there were writers, but since for years I read only science fiction, a lot of the authors whom I enjoyed were also scientists or engineers. I sort of assumed that they all were, deep down. My bubble was maintained. I was a bit of an intellectual snob. In grade school, this led to me getting assigned various unflattering nicknames, and getting beat up regularly. Being a late bloomer in many areas of emotional development, my intellectual holier than them attitude only began to crack late in my high school years.

Of course, once a dam cracks, it generally fails completely. I’ve come to see that academic success depends upon many factors, including opportunity, environment and, maybe foremost, desire. If a person with a genius intellect is absolutely driven to play guitar or write, if they must make music or tell stories or die inside, then they aren’t going to waste a lot of time taking calculus or chemistry. As Steven King said, if he didn’t write, he was a monkey. I have also known a fair number of scientists and engineers who, outside of their narrow specialty, are deeply flawed and woefully ignorant. The then-chairman of my department once said that all too many of his colleagues  are “idiots with good math skills.”

Since then, though, I have come to see one profession, one group, as obvious exemplars of high intelligence. That would be…comedians. Especially stand-up comedians.

To watch a talented stand-up perform is to see a brain firing on all of its multitudinous cylinders. They need to make the observations, recall them, and transform them into narratives. They must master the millisecond intervals of timing that are the difference between hysterical laughter and awkward silence. They need to be able to jump from their practiced routine to dealing with a heckler or other interruption, then seamlessly get right back into the flow of the performance. They also need skins of Kevlar, the intellectual confidence to fail and persevere.

Hearing a performance by Lennie Bruce, Mel Brooks. Sid Caesar, Joan Rivers, Burns and Allen, Robin Williams, Jonathan Winters or Janeane Garofalo (among others), I am in absolute awe of the way a human brain can work.

Smart people can do or be many things. But I don’t think that you can do comedy if you aren’t.