My Mom is Smart! Well ok, she has a lot of factual trivia, but she’s still pretty smart.
My parents watch Jeopardy every evening. My Mom will often know most of the answers and I’ve seen her “run a category” blurting out the correct response before anyone else can.
It isn’t unusual for her to not know the Final Jeopardy answer, but it’s more often the case that she does. She always acts surprised. I’m not really sure why anymore, maybe because the values of the era she grew up in maybe?
Both are smart; father has a doctorate from MIT, mother has a master’s in computer engineering.
Unfortunately, being smart has not prevented my mom from believing all sorts of wild conspiracy theories and irrational beliefs. She’s smart, just unreasonable.
My father was a professor with the University of Wisconsin, and was considered to be one of the country’s foremost experts on small business marketing techniques.
My mother has always been very intellectually curious (much more so than my dad) and well-read, and has always been very good at solving puzzles.
So, I’ve always thought of them to both be pretty smart, though in different arenas.
My father is very smart but probably also somewhere on the spectrum probably. Give him a logical puzzle and he’s a genius. Give him a situational social problem and he’s hopeless.
Both my parents were bright, but neither went to college. My dad read voraciously, and my mom watched TV and was up on current events.
They watched Jeopardy every night it was on, and both did well with regular Jeopardy but struggled with Double Jeopardy just like I do. If you sat and watched with them, you would think that my dad was smarter because he would never guess an answer he wasn’t 100% sure of. My mom would guess at answers and get many wrong, but she might have scored better had kept score—different playing strategies, I suppose. Her memory worsened as she got older, and she died of Alzheimer’s Disease at age 75. My dad died at age 91, sharp as a tack.
My father got a bachelors degree in Economics and worked as a contract negotiator for a major defense contractor for 33 years. He also retired as a Captain in the US Navy Reserve. Very smart guy.
Mom graduated as a Registered Nurse from Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing. She went back to college when her kids were grown, and completed her BA in sociology. She became a hospital administrator. Also very smart.
eta: They both had very good senses of humor, which, in my experience, correlates with intelligence.
My parents are rural people, deep with practical everyday knowledge for their lifestyle. They built both their retirement houses, summer and winter, entirely by themselves, including plumbing and wiring. I would put their ability to track and bring down wild game against literally anyone on this message board.
But — they readily and enthusiastically swallow every instance of Fox-driven news propaganda, without a second thought, from covid denial to climate change refusal to conspiracy theories about elections and defunding the police. No amount of evidence or critical consideration can pierce their ideological armor.
My parents spent their lives in journalism. They published and edited newspapers. My father in particular has an unbelievably wide-ranging mind, encompassing the arts, history, sociology, business, and politics. Yes, highly intelligent people, both of them.
My mom had to fight her dad to be allowed to go to high school - he didn’t see the point - so college was out of the question. She’d have thrived in higher education, tho not in any technical area. She’s book-smart because she reads a ton, but her solution to any mechanical problem is duct tape, WD-40, or percussive maintenance - not joking here. She was on Jeopardy in the Art Fleming days and was ahead most of the game, but lost of FJ because of the category. She came home with $600 and a set of encyclopedias. Good times!
My dad got his bachelors degree at night school with 3 little kids at home and while working a full-time job. He had a businessman’s mind and he did very well, retiring as a VP in the last company he worked for. He was handy, he was a talented accordionist, and he was smart enough to know his limits.
They both came to computers late in their lives. Dad died 20 years ago, so he missed out on a lot of amazing technology that I think would have fascinated him. Mom handles her finances and shopping on line and she’s mastered email, which really is pretty good for her. And at 88, she’s still pretty sharp. I’d say overall, they were pretty smart.
My dad was a machinist. He was very good at building things. Owned every tool you could think of. It’s too bad he went down the rabbit hole of Fundamental Christianism; he’s intolerable to be around nowadays.
My mother was an admin assistant (called a “secretary” back in the day). Not all that educated, but a very good person.
So when it comes to my parents, neither went to college, and I wouldn’t describe either as an intellectual or worldly. The same can be said for my two siblings. I was the weird one.
Dad: 3 engineering degrees (Mech, EE, *), licensed professional engineer, licensed electrician, pilot, surveyor, machinist, accomplished carpenter and builder – can literally construct a house from scratch, accomplished hunter and outdoorsman, retired from USAF and engineering careers. Grew up on a farm with no electricity or running water, left for the big city, worked through college as garbage man, part-time boxer, and construction trades (hi-rise mainly).
Mom: 3 degrees, (Business, Education, MS Education), some teaching certifications (unsure which). Grew up in tiny burg (no traffic light), got electricity and running water before starting school. Worked in insurance, then Ed degrees, teacher, dept head, vice principal, then principal.
Both worked through school, either night school or night jobs. I attended both their graduations.
When we all got together (my family of four, plus sis and parents) there were 7 people and 18 college degrees in the room. We’re all deep southern rednecks, and sound like the cast of Hee Haw. Anyone unfamiliar with us automatically assumes low intelligence.
*The third is something with math+surveying. From the 50s, I don’t remember the exact name
Dad was quite smart. He didn’t go to college, instead enlisting in the US Army Air Corps during WWII (385th Fighter Squadron of the 364th Fighter Group). He worked hard in a technical field for many decades after the war and made up for his lack of secondary education by being a voracious reader of fine books (as long as I knew him he was always reading 2-3 books at a time and amassed a large library). He loved to debate and could hold his own (even against college professors) debating subjects in many areas of science and virtually every period of history. He was great at Jeopardy, too.
My English mother didn’t finish high school. Living as a teenager in bomb alley during the Blitz disrupted her education. Then she married a Yank (Dad) and moved to the states. Though she wasn’t book-smart, she had more common sense than most and always excelled at whatever job she did (from talented homemaker to quickly becoming supervisor of the company she worked for after raising her kids).
Right? My dad belonged to MENSA and he said he had a high IQ. He also half-jokingly believed he was a descendant of Anastasia, daughter of the last Tsar of Russia. Our family moved to a different, distant city every five years when I and my brother were kids as he chased after executive-dom, and that continued into retirement (the moving part). They bought a house each time and sold at a loss half the time. My dad “seemed” smart with all the trappings of intelligence, what with the book case filled with Russian and European history books. IMHO he did well enough with practical matters, but overall he and mom were probably just above average.
Both worked factory line jobs their whole lives. Raised three kids, had two cars, bought a house and went on vacations while also saving money. The American Dream so to speak.
Dad was good at cards and dominoes and often won because of his ability to count cards. He could often tell you what you had in your hand by the cards laid and by reading people, even when he was (or especially when) completely drunk.
Mom was the first Mexican-American to graduate from an all white high school in west Texas in 1949. Dad was blackballed by the Klan for marrying her and could not get steady work any where in the state. He was smart enough to leave Texas for Ohio at that point.
No, not really. Practical and frugal but incurious and born without a nuanced bone in their bodies. The easy, traditional beliefs, what they called “common knowledge,” were never to be questioned.t
Neither of my parents went to college, but I’d say they were both smart. My dad could fix anything. He was always tinkering with electronics. He could build things too. My mom was/is a big reader. She’s good at trivia and is still good at crossword puzzles at the age of 82.
I would say so. And they also don’t give up easily, so they’ll figure things out.
They are at a disadvantage with computer stuff, that they are not as comfortable trying things. That said, they have set up a Ring doorbell, Alexa and her friends, a bird camera, etc.
My husband’s mother recently did a competence test, and she scored well. His sisters think that she only did well because she was so smart (master’s in education), but she’s definitely declining.