Excerpt of The Speech I Would Have Given Had I Been Valedictorian

If there’s one question I get all the time it’s, “Why can’t I be as smart as you?

This is a very good question. And one, given your inferior intelligence, that will require a good bit of explanation. However, given your short attention span and limited cranial capacity, I will try to simplify (aka dumb it down) for you.

I am extremely smart.

Some people refer to this as being gifted. This term is misleading. It implies that intelligence was handed to me like a present in a box that upon shaking feels like it might be a video game or the keys to a vehicle with a ‘thumping’ sound system, but which upon opening is just a sweater with an embroidered pussy cat on it which gets you beaten up when you wear it to school three days in a row. Instead, my intelligence had to be earned, fought for, spilled and cleaned up, and constructed through hard labor by foreign workers who were not as smart as me and thus didn’t know to look for better jobs. The blueprints for my genius can not be found in any textbooks or manuals, nor can they be described by the infantile ramblings of so called teachers, professors, or my many assigned and frequently visited parole officers. My brilliance is a tree that grows in the fertile soil of experience, and extends 74 miles into space where it catches passing satellites which not only hang from it’s beautiful branches like multimillion dollar Christmas ornaments, but also impart to my brilliant tree all of their satellite knowledge. This is how I know the license plate and social security numbers of so many young and attractive celebrities, and it’s the only reason, no matter what else you heard. It’s also why you get such great cell phone reception in my presence.

In short, unless your brain is a 74 mile tall tree that catches satellites, that’s the first reason you can’t be as smart as me.

Second, I know the answer to every question that has ever been asked and that can ever be asked. Each and every answer is written on a sort of cheat-sheet that I keep folded up under my watch band (which may sound like cheating, but it’s not because I memorized all the answers when I wrote them down so I don’t ever actually look at the sheet, I just like knowing it’s there). You may ask (and I knew you would because it’s on my sheet) how it could be possible to get such a wealth of information onto a piece of paper that could be folded up and put inconspicuously under my watch band. The answer is lasers. (Lasers are also the answer to almost all the other questions that have ever been asked or could ever be asked, so if you less intelligent folks out there find yourself facing a tough question, try just answering: lasers.) But these are not ordinary lasers, they’re special lasers, that I invented, potty trained, and put through school. And they write their information in a font that I also invented which can only be deciphered by people like myself whose IQ is an infinity symbol.

Some of you may think that you’ve heard me answer a question incorrectly, or you may have a court order that seems to show that from time to time I make a mistake. These apparent errors are not reflections of my lack of intelligence, but merely part of my carefully conceived plan to insure that no persons (or vindictive supernatural beings) ever discover my cheat-sheet. These ‘incorrect answers’, ‘failing grades’, or ‘insuffcient explanations for stalker like behavior’ are merely my fanciful and careless marks on the Scantron sheet of life that allow me to be the smartest person ever without arousing suspicion or incurring further beatings like the savage one visited upon me on day four of the pussycat sweatshirt marathon.

To summarize, unless you can read the infinity IQ font written by special home schooled lasers and happen to have made a cheat sheet containing all the answers to all questions which you keep in your watch band, that’s the second reason you can’t be as smart as me.

There are 847 more reasons why you can’t be as smart as me, but our time is short, and really, is there any point in dwelling on that which you can’t change? (The answer is: no. But if you said lasers you were close.) If you would like more information on your inability to be as smart as me, send a two liter bottle of Big Red, a Whatmacallit candy bar, and a self addressed stamped envelope to Smartest Man In The Universe. You don’t need to write anything else. They’ll find me. The law always does. Reason number 8 involves sticky buns, and reason number 612 details my nightly aluminum foil mummification ritual. They’re all good reading and well worth your investment in time, soda, candy, and stamps.

To conclude, there are 849 reasons you can’t be as smart as me, but you lack the wherewithal and I lack the time to cover all of them now. But my hope is that when you see giant trees extending into space you’ll think of me and my mind, and you’ll want to leap into the branches of those trees and begin to climb, reaching ever higher until you grow too tired and hungry to continue and eventually fall and wonder why you even tried to ascend to the heights of my genius.

If I could say one final thing to each and every one of you, it would simply be this.

Lasers.