Stroke of Genius

As I was reading My Stroke of Insight (by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D) my wife asked, "Are you enjoying that book?" My answer was slow in coming. "Enjoy isn't the word I would use," I said. "It's a fascinating personal memoir of a brain scientist's own stroke, what she felt during the stroke, how she had out of body experiences, her thoughts about death, about the health industry, and her long, eight year recovery process. I'm not enjoying reading about a bloody brain, but it is certainly fascinating."

I read the book in a few hours, and found several fascinating points of interest with the author, particularly as she is an Indiana State University grad, and following her stroke taught at Rose Hulman in Terre Haute and eventually made her way to IU, where she now teaches out of the Med Center in Indianapolis.

But that's where the commonalities end.

Jill Taylor, after all, is a genius who graduated from Harvard, Magna Cum Laude.
I graduated from Duke University, Lawdy How Cum.

Jill Taylor was voted one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine this year.
I was voted "Most Likely to be a Disappointment to his Mother" my senior year in high school.

Jill Taylor is a wonderfully witty and snappy fifty-year-old woman who apparently has never married.
I am a neary fifty-year-old man who has been married for twenty five years to a witty woman who snaps my head off.

Jill Taylor is a great success who has now written a best-selling book her first time out.
I am a dismal failure of a writer who continues to produce large quantities of landfill fodder.

Jill Taylor's mother nursed her baby back to health over a span of eight years following the stroke.
My mother didn't buy me any underwear this Christmas.