FOUR
When Maggie came for the results the following day, she was very pleased with Frank’s IQ, but totally flabbergasted by Joshua’s. She insisted I had made a mistake and was ready to pay for another session of tests for him. I sat there with her for a while, striving to describe what I had just realized about the different levels of giftedness and their associated psychology.
I remember telling her: “Maggie, your younger son is a genius, you cannot fathom him because he’s so way over your head that what he says appears baseless to you. But it’s all built on something he has noticed or felt that has eluded you. He perfectly fits the profile of people with an IQ over 145”. It was all true, Joshua, as opposed to his brother who was at the moderate level of giftedness, was considered highly gifted.
He was hardworking, while his brother loved to procrastinate. He had a great sense of empathy and morality. He possessed a high thirst for knowledge and a need to create, which came from his capacity to become emotionally connected with everyone and everything he was interested in. He could understand information both with his intellect and his finely tuned feelings, allowing him to put together theories that anyone with a lower I.Q. could not infer. He could sense people and guess the personality hiding behind the social mask. His only Achilles Heel was his sensitivity. When he felt distraught, which would happen regularly, his brain would stop functioning properly, he would look clueless, attracting contempt from his less brainy brother.