A Very Smart Woman

A woman was entering her middle 30s, and despaired that she may never meet someone that she would be able to spend the rest of her life with. The men she met could not hold her interest, and even if they could they never called her back. Her therapist told her what she needed to here:

"Jill, you're just too damned smart," she told her. "Men really do want an intelligent woman, if they're any good at all, but you intimidate them. Your brain works in a way that is incomprehensible to even very smart men. You need to find someone who is smart enough to keep up with you, though that won't be easy."

So Jill began her search, using ways that only smart people would know (I don't know either), and finally found someone she thought might be her intellectual equal (or close enough.) She contacted him and he agreed to go on a date with her (his name is immaterial, but it's Joshua), and they met at a nice, but not too expensive, restaurant in a good part of town.

Unfortunately, as smart as Joshua was (and again, his name is immaterial so don't focus on that), he was a complete slob. His hair was a tangled mess, his clothes looked like he slept in them regularly, and he stank! Jill could have forgiven him many things, but that stench was just too much!

At her next session she told her therapist what happened. "Look, I wasn't trying to be overly choosy," she assured her therapist (who's name is also immaterial.) (But it's Linda, if you must know.) "I didn't care about his looks or how much money he made, but he stank! I couldn't get past that. And he's the only male I've found, after exhaustive research, who could even come close to me intellectually. I just don't know what to do!" she wailed.

Linda (the therapist) studied Jill thoughtfully, then finally sighed and put her notebook down. "Jill, you have to promise me you won't tell anybody I told you this," she began. "I know a brain surgeon who can make a few... tweaks here and there, and bring your intellect down to a level that won't be so intimidating. It would mean you won't be as smart as you are now, but you'll be able to meet someone."

Jill said she'd need some time to think about it, but the truth was she had already decided. She'd accomplished everything that she really needed to with her top-rate intellect, and now she just wanted to find some companionship. She told her therapist the next week that she wanted to talk to the surgeon.

The surgeon explained in detail the procedure (and Jill, being so smart, corrected a few errors in his plan) and they agreed on a date for the surgery. "Just tell me this," Jill said before she was put under. "Will I still be somewhat intelligent?"

"Oh, of course," the surgeon reassured her. "We're only going to dial it back, as it were, but a few notches. You'll still be smarter than the average person, just not so much so that you're miles above everyone else."

"Okay, that's perfect!" Jill exclaimed as the mask was lowered over her mouth and nose.

The doctor had told her that the surgery would last several hours, but, as it goes with surgery, from Jill's perspective she was out hardly any time at all. Her first waking memory was of the doctor coming into her room, looking very concerned.

"Jill," he said. "I made a terrible mistake during the surgery. I intended to decrease your intelligence by roughly 5 percent, 10 at the outside. Somehow I overshot my target, and I decreased your intelligent by about 93 percent. I'm so terribly sorry. Can you ever forgive me?"

Jill looked at the doctor with a puzzled expression on her face. Finally, she spoke. "You know what I'm going to do, Doctor? I'm going to build a WALL! A yuge wall! It's going to be the best wall, believe me!"