I recently sent an e-mail filled with self-pity to my friend, the playwright, Marcia Cebulska. I was having an especially Bad Writing Day. I told Marcia that I had no brain and that our Muse (we share a Muse named Lydia) had abandoned me. I complained that all my good ideas were used up, and, worse still, I probably had early-onset Alzheimers, something I worry about every now and again.

Marcia is kind and generous, and, as a playwright, she knows the agonies of the writing life. But how did she try to comfort me? By emailing me back that I was "wonderful and intelligent."

Wonderful? Intelligent!!! I couldn't have felt more insulted. In my Jewish family where achievement was next to godliness, "intelligent" was a codeword for "above average," which was one of the worst things you could say about a person. The only compliment you could give somebody was "brilliant" or better.

Poor Marcia. She didn't meant to deflate me further. She simply didn't know my vernacular because in her family, it was dangerous to be smart, so they tended to play it down. In order to edify her, I emailed the following code.
In my family there was (from the top down):