The Story Of The Time I Tricked My Mom Into Thinking I’m A Genius

I was thinking about my Mom a lot lately. A lot of you knew her. She died eleven years ago on July 6th.  I won't get too much into that, she had cancer, and we took care of her as best we could for as long as we could. Every month or so I run into someone who knew her, and it's always a pleasant experience.

When I was a kid, I thought being pessimistic was cool, and it kind of forced me into becoming a pessimist myself.  As an adult, I realize how silly that is.  I try to focus on the positive now and make my life as simple, honest, and drama free as possible (aka living under a rock?).  I still have skepticism, but I try to surround myself with positive influences.

I'm the one in our family that tries to stop my sister and father from crying about Mom.  Mostly because I know she would be annoyed with us for doing that.  And the fact that she isn't here doesn't take her away from me in anything but a physical form. I still have the memories, I still have the lessons she taught me, I still have everything that was really important, after all.

So I was thinking of happy memories and I suddenly remembered this one.  I was in middle school, I believe, when this happened.  I was hanging out with one of my friends, Jillian, at her house after school.  She and her mom liked to watch Jeopardy! together.  So one day, we were sitting in her living room, watching the show like everyone else does, trying to guess the right answers.  This was probably  maybe 3:00 in the afternoon or something like that?  So anyway, after we hang out, it's time to go home.  Mom's home, and it's about 5:00 p.m. She was off doing something, and let me choose the channel to watch on TV. I came across another episode of Jeopardy!, not realizing it was a repeat of the episode I had just watched with Jillian.  

Aaaah, yes.  Here we go.

So Mom and I sat there, and I answered as many questions as I could from what I remembered earlier in the day.  Mom's face, you wouldn't believe it.  I wasn't an exceptionally bright child (as you can tell from who I turned out to be as an adult), but I was studious, so I got decent grades.  But getting decent grades to my parents made me a genius, and this was just more proof that I was, in fact, a genius.  Mom stared at me in shock, and I just kept going, not saying anything.  When Dad got home, Mom told him all about how I knew almost all of the hardest questions!

I just let them believe it.  I don't remember if I ever told them that I'd seen the answers beforehand.  I just let it go and enjoyed my "genius" day.  It's happy memories like that, those are the ones that come to me when I think about my Mom.  Even if it was a bratty little punk thing to do!

Geniusly yours,

Behka