"I'm leeeeavin' on a jet plane..."

I'm sitting in the airport, leaving for LA in about an hour. I'm excited and nervous. Excited because I've never been to California, and nervous because I'm attending a dinner meeting thing with some cool, high-powered industry people. I'd like to make an impression beyond "some fat yokel". Although, you know, I'll take that if I have to.

I talked to Kerry on my way to the airport, and he's crazy busy with his book promotion tour. He did twenty-eight interviews and radio show phone-ins yesterday. I suspect that's a nice problem to have. He sounds exhausted and a little flustered, but to be honest, he also sounds happy. Good for him.

As for me, I'm happy to be getting out of town for a few days.

That's it. What, you were waiting for something meaningful?

Um, okay, a quick political observation. In recent weeks, both Barack Obama and John McCain have referred to the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq as a "waste", and both have quickly backtracked when patriotic eyebrows began wiggling menacingly across this great land.

Two candidates for the presidency are soooooooooo close to showing the courage to speak the truth about the war, but in the end, both hedged. I am both heartened and disgusted. As for the Democratic Party, which called on McCain to apologize for using the term mere weeks after Obama did the exact same thing, WTF? Knee-jerk, safe politics are going to serve you exactly as well in the next presidential election as they did in the last two. Show us something better, if you can. Some integrity and ideological consistency might be a good place to start.

I watched the Bob Woodruff story on traumatic brain injuries last week, and it rejuvenated all my anti-war feelings in a way that I hadn't felt in a long time. I don't think I'm going to be able to vote for anyone of either party who has supported this war, certainly not within the past two years or so. That narrows my choice of candidates considerably, at least as the field stands now. Who knows what will happen in the coming months?

Wouldn't it be funny, after my notorious Nader "Green Days of Shame" of 2000, if I ended up voting for Al Gore?

Okay, time to fly. See you when I get to the land of the Beautiful People. I assume I will feel like Jabba the Hutt the whole time.

Chasing Justice

Kerry & friend
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

My friend Kerry Max Cook's book, Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit, hit the stores today. I'm listening to him on NPR's Diane Rehm Show right now. He's doing a great job, but then, his story is compelling, almost unbearably so. He's my friend; we hang out and take our kids to movies together, and yet when I look at him and watch him move through the world, I still can't grasp that he survived this experience and came through the other side.

Here's how HarperCollins describes his story:

Wrongfully convicted of killing a young woman in Texas, Cook was sentenced to death in 1978 and served two decades on death row, in a prison system so notoriously brutal and violent that in 1980 a federal court ruled that serving time in Texas's jails was "cruel and unusual punishment." As scores of men around him were executed, Cook relentlessly battled a legal system that wanted him dead; meanwhile he fought daily to survive amid unspeakable conditions and routine assaults. When an advocate and a crusading lawyer joined his struggle in the 1990s, a series of retrials was forced. At last, in November 1996, Texas's highest appeals court threw out Cook's conviction, citing overwhelming evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct.

And finally in the spring of 1999 long-overlooked DNA evidence was tested and it linked another man to the rape and murder for which Cook had been convicted. Today, Cook is a free man and the proud father of a young son.

Kerry Max Cook was convicted on the basis of some very dubious testimony by one witness (who described a person with an entirely different appearance) and a fellow prisoner who claimed that Kerry confessed the crime to him, despite the fact that Kerry was held in solitary confinement at the time. The evidence against Kerry consisted of a fingerprint on the victim's patio door. An "expert" for the prosecution testified that the fingerprint had been left during the time frame of the murder. Such a time-sensitive determination on a fingerprint is scientifically impossible; they might as well have consulted a psychic.

The Kerry Max Cook that I know seems so far away from that life. He's a warm father and playful husband with a quick sense of humor a wildly optimistic nature. He talks openly about his terrible story, but his eye is on the future.

In a few days, I'll be flying to Los Angeles to join Kerry for a big celebrity book party being thrown for him. I'll be there as his photographer, and as his friend. I hope his book does well, but more than that, I hope Kerry gets the life he deserves.

God knows, if anyone has paid in advance for happiness, it's Kerry Max Cook.

Boring but brief

Two quick operational notes:

1) Apple's iWeb application makes pretty websites, by golly, so I've been using it for my other nonbloggerly pages. The problem is that it's not easily customizable, and if you're not hosting your site on Apple's servers, things like blog comments don't work without third party (or possible divine) intervention.

Well, I found a way to do it, I think, using my old HaloScan comment account from my journal. So far it doesn't seem to function consistently, however, and it formats weirdly. I'm still trying to tweak it. Still, it appears to be working, kind of sort of maybe perhaps, so if there's anything that you ever wanted to comment on or abuse me for over at the book blog, now's your chance.

(Someone also told me that the "comments" link doesn't actually look like a link. Perhaps I am going to have to break up with iWeb soon.)

2) In the next week or so, the name and URL of this blog will be changing, in part for boring legal reasons and also to bring it into parallel with the book site. The content and feel won't change (not sure if that's good news or just... news), so not a huge deal. Once it changes, this URL should still take you here, so I won't just disappear. Just a little heads up.

Martin

Martin
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

A few weeks ago, we took Schuyler to the Dallas Museum of Art. She had a good time looking at all the smartifying stuff, I'm happy to say, but honestly, it was when we ended up in the gift shop that we really started having fun. Schuyler, because she's seven, and me because, well, because I'm me.

They had puppets, and she fell in love. Which is how we ended up with a monster. Schuyler's new monster.

We call him Martin.

There's something I've wanted to try with Schuyler for a while, an idea I had during a box class parents' meeting a few months ago. Schuyler's condition hasn't affected her in some of the more serious ways that other kids suffer from, like seizures and serious dysphagia. (When I say "suffer", I'm not kidding; the polymicrogyria group I belong to is a regular source of truly sad stories.)

But when it comes to her speech, she's been hit hard. She is completely nonverbal, with almost no consonants at all. The thing is, however, that she's got all the vowels and she's got perfect inflection. She's trying, so hard that it will break your heart, and furthermore she hears the words and sounds that she's trying to make. If you hand her something, her "thank you" sounds so convincing that unless you're paying close attention, you don't realize that she actually said "Ain oo".

Ironically, it's those inflections and sincere attempts at speech that can sometimes stand in her way of moving forward on the Big Box of Words. Not at school, I don't think. In her class, all the cool kids talk like cyborgs, so she's excited to do the same.

(That's unless she's feeling like a punk, as she was yesterday, although that may very well be because her box class teacher has been out this week. Apparently harassing substitutes teachers is a genetic trait, because I was a dick to every sub I ever had. One more item on the list of crimes that the devil will be reading off when I die, although honestly, I'm sure it would be on like page thirty.)

When she's at home with Julie and me, however, Schuyler gets lazy with her device, for the simple reason that we can understand a lot of what she says. She's a smart kid; she knows this, even when we pretend otherwise. When she's with us, she doesn't like to use her device.

Thus my idea for the puppet. I just didn't expect it to work so well.

She won't always use the box for us. But it turns out that for Martin? She'll do anything. Last night we studied for a spelling test that she has today, but it wasn't until Martin started asking her how to spell the words on her list that she became enthusiastic about it.

Schuyler's a complicated person, and always has been. She knows that Martin's just a puppet, and that her father is the one manipulating him, just like she used to understand that when I said "Don't eat that!", the goal was to get her to, well, eat that.

Like her father, Schuyler's defining characteristic is that she does not like being told what to do. Monster or not, she negotiates her own terms with the world.

Grey Anatomy

Oh, good lord...
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

I was making some minor but detailed changes to a photograph today, the one I'm using for my promotional headshots for the time being, and in doing so, I had to blow it up to actual pixel size. And that's when I saw it.

I'm going grey, by golly.

It's in its early stages, and I'll certainly take that over balding, only because I'm pretty sure my bald head would be all lumpy and fat-rolly. Not a bad look for a pro wrestler or a bouncer, but not really the vibe that I'm shooting for.

The thing that concerns me is that it's happening quickly, like in a matter of a few short months. It's like my body's getting ready for my next birthday. You know the one. Thirty-ten.

In case you're wondering, the answer is no, I haven't gotten my edited manuscript back from St. Martin's yet. I assume they had to order more red Sharpies.

Armchair Apocrypha

Speaking of music I like, NPR is featuring Andrew Bird on their website. Specifically, they're focusing on a song from his new album, Armchair Apocrypha.

Let's take a hypothetical scenario for a moment. Suppose a hypothetical but extremely cool reader sent me a hypothetical copy of the new album, due out in a month or so. What would my hypothetical opinion be?

I'd say it was awesome, with a move away from the acoustic sound of his most recent stuff but once again totally unique.

You know. Hypothetically.

(Edited to make it clear that I have (hypothetically) already been sent the cd. This wasn't an attempt to weasel free stuff out of anyone. Don't worry, you'll know when I'm mooching.)

Bug

The flu sucks.
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

Well, my weekend plans have changed slightly.

She seemed absolutely fine when she got on the bus, but about an hour later, we got the call. Schuyler is suffering from either the flu or demonic possession.

It sucks when any kid is sick, but with Schuyler, it's extra heartbreaking because she can't really tell us very much about how she feels. The Big Box of Words helps to some extent, but it requires a certain amount of concentration and clarity that might just be somewhat lacking at the moment when your stomach is threatening to go all Vesuvius on you. Sometimes there's not much of a high-tech alternative to yelling "Gotta puke!"

We were practicing just now.

"So if you feel like you're going to throw up, here's a trash can," I told her as she lay on the couch. "Be sure to move Jasper out of the way first." (I swear, he looked worried.)

She nodded her head.

"Okay, so you need to let me know if you feel like you're going to be sick. What are you going to say if you feel like you're going to throw up?"

She opened her mouth and howled at me. "Aaahh!"

That'll do.

Cover story

(Originally posted at SCHUYLER'S MONSTER.)

When Wired writer and first-time novelist James Bernard Frost didn't care for the cover art for his novel World Leader Pretend, he hired artist Dave Warnke to design a funky new cover sticker to replace the one on the trade paperback.

The publisher in question is St. Martin's Press, the same people putting out Schuyler’s Monster. Well, of course it is.

The truth is, however, that I'm not concerned. For one thing, I think a cover design for my book is going to be pretty straightforward and simple. The title is short and striking, if I may be so snotty, and if there's one thing I think we can all agree on, it's that I've taken a few photographs of Schuyler. Finding one that works for a book cover shouldn't be a difficult task.

For another thing, when I went and read the story, I got the impression that while St. Martin’s Press didn't give the author what he wanted, they did at least make a good faith effort to change the elements that he objected to. He even admits that the whole story has been blown out of proportion.

No, what fascinated me about the story isn't some fear that St. Martin's is going to put a picture of an alligator or a killer robot on my cover. I'm more interested in the fact that if not for the GalleyCat article, I don't know that I would have ever heard of Frost's book or made it to his blog. It looks like I'm not the only one noticing because of this story, either.

Not every successful publicity opportunity comes from a marketing plan. I wonder how St. Martin's will react to this.

Quiet

Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

I know I've been quiet lately. I suspect that's not going to change any time soon.

Want to know what I listen to when I feel quiet? I found a short excerpt of one of my favorites.

Old & Lost Rivers, by Tobias Picker

I'm listening to it now. It's funny how the loudest noises in the head can be drowned out by something as quiet and ethereal as this.

I hope everyone's having a nice Valentine's Day.

The Twitchy Time

Why I am a writer, not an artist.
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

I drew a bee, upon Schuyler's instructions. I believe that it is a very fine bee, and I don't particularly feel like putting my own face in front of a camera any time soon, so here you go. My mad skillz on display.

It is the twitchy time for me right now, which everyone told me would happen in the interim between turning in my manuscript and getting it back for edits and rewrites. I've also been told to enjoy the feeling that my book is actually, you know, mine, because soon I'll be fighting to hold onto some tiny measure of control over everything from the final content to the cover art to how it's described in the catalogue. I'm not too worried, if only because 1) I've heard good things about St. Martin's Press and how they treat their authors, and 2) there's not much I can do about it now anyway. Everything will happen in its own time and its own way.

Which is to say that yes, I am a big box of worry.

I may have some trips coming up to distract me from my empty mailbox. It looks like I am probably going to be going to Los Angeles next month for a few days, not for anything book-related but to do some photography work (and general entourage duty) for a friend who's got a big event going on, complete with real live celebrities, by golly. I'm looking forward to it; I've never been to California before, and it'll be a nice change, from self-promoting author to friend-promoting paparazzi. I am going to spend the next three weeks engaged in a strict regimen of deyokelization.

I may also be going to Austin this weekend to hang with some old friends from my former life at the bookstore, too. Nothing fancy about that one, though. Just a wacky themed party ("junior high talent show!") and an opportunity to be either embarrassing or amusing.

Or both, really. I have some ideas.

So yeah. Twitchy. Twitch twitch twitch twitch.

As good as a paternity test, revisited

Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

(At lunch, Dallas Museum of Art cafe)

Julie: (Splitting a pepperoni and mushroom pizza with Schuyler) Go on, try the mushroom, Schuyler. It's good.

Me: Bleagh.

Julie: Don't listen to your father. Mushrooms are tasty.

Me: Don't do it, Schuyler. They taste like feet!

(Schuyler eats the mushroom.)

Me: See? It tastes like feet, doesn't it?

Schuyler: Nooooo...

Julie: Ha!

(Schuyler laughs, then leans over in her chair and points to her ass.)

Sad day in Texas

Well, crap.

Molly Ivins has died, after a long battle with breast cancer.

Following as it does the death of Ann Richards, Molly's passing further thins the already shaky list of worth-a-shit Texans. When I think of her, I think of one of my favorite sayings. "Comfort the disturbed. Disturb the comfortable." It'll be harder work without her in the world.

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?

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Not in my Language

I don't have anything in particular to say about this, other than it makes me think a great deal about what goes on inside the minds of broken people. Not just the autistic or cognitively impaired but also (and I suppose inevitably) ones like Schuyler who exist in two worlds, the one in which we all live and which they find crude ways to send the rest of us little telegrams (using things like sign language or the Big Box of Words), and their own world of monsters, where they scream and laugh and deliver their own internal oratory that no one will ever hear.



"The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not."

Zoboomafoo and Steve Irwin are corrupting the children of America

Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

This time, Schuyler tries her hand at fiction. I say fiction because really, outside of a pet store, Schuyler has never seen a snake. We don't exactly spend a lot of time in the woods, communing with nature. There is neither cable tv nor air conditioning in the forest, after all. Isn't that why we stopped living there and built actual cities in the first place?

Anyway, here's another little essay from Schuyler, written on her device at school.

---

I see snake in the forest. I feel scared. Snake is hissing. Baby snake is green. Snake is in tree.

Schuyler

---

I'm not sure why I keep sharing these with you since they're certainly not any different from what any other kid would write at school.

Well, I guess that's why, come to think of it.

The Pleasurable Irritation of the New

Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

A funny thing happened when I got to the end of my book. I wanted to keep writing.

During the last few weeks of 2006, with a deadline looming, my writing schedule wasn't pretty. It's no secret that I'm not the most disciplined writer. If Schuyler comes in the room and wants to play, I'm not sure she's ever heard me say. "Sorry, Daddy's writing." If she has a puppy in her hands, forget it. Oh, come on, now. Puppies?

As a result, I actually did most of my writing, particularly during November and December, after about 9pm. I almost never went to bed before 2 or 3am, and now that I'm done, I can't seem to shake the habit. I am an indescribable delight in the morning, no doubt.

It's a weird time for me and the book right now. I mailed off the manuscript to St. Martin's and my agent a week and a half ago, and I haven't heard anything since. If not for the UPS tracking website, I wouldn't even know for sure that they arrived at all. And the thing is, this isn't a bad thing. If my agent or my publisher were idle enough that they were calling me every time they got something in the mail, I suppose I'd be worried about how busy they weren't. St. Martin's Press publishes something like 700 titles a year. They signed me to write a book, and I did it. When they need something else, they'll let me know.

So the manuscript is in the hands of my editor now, and there's nothing for me to do until she gets back to me to let me know what needs to be changed or exactly how big of an error St. Martin's has made. I'm in this funny sort of period of self-doubt, made even worse the other day by a few hours spent at Barnes & Noble, looking at the other titles put out by my publisher and my editor in particular. Good lord, some of the people she's worked with in the past know their stuff. They are doctors and specialists. I'm a former music major. I like puppies.

The next phase for me is working on a marketing plan, which I'm already assembling pretty aggressively. I recently (and unexpectedly) made a local media contact that is yielding some very interesting things, and there's another mediabistro event coming up in Dallas wherefore to make with the schmoozing. It's all still pretty new to me. We'll see how I do.

All in all, things are looking good. "I eat the air, promise-crammed," as Hamlet said so very artsy-fartsily.

But still, I'm itching to write. Furthermore, I've already screwed up my sleep patterns for the foreseeable future, and my agent approved of my idea for my next book. (Well, one of my ideas, anyway; I have a few but only one ties in with SCHUYLER'S MONSTER in any real way, and for my second book, she thought I should stay close to home, so to speak.) So as crazy as it feels to me after just finishing the one book, I've begun working on the next.

Put simply, I'm writing a book about fathers. It'll be about the father I had and the father I am, and also about other fathers, good ones and bad ones and famous ones and the ones who go unsung or unmourned in their simple private lives. At my agent's suggestion (and one that I agree with), I'm not writing it in the form of essays or interviews; apparently I am to become a memoirist, and how pretentious does THAT sound? If you've ever read Sarah Vowell or Bill Bryson and seen how they weave their own narrative into their historical or travel writing, you'll have an idea of what I'm doing.

There are a few fairly well-known stories I'm planning to cover, like Paul and Gage Wayment and Joseph and Rolf Mengele (such cheerful dad stories!), but I'm very interested in suggestions from you about stories of fathers and their children that you think should be told. I'm interested in anything, although it would be especially nice to hear about fathers who aren't necessarily famous (and who aren't murderous Nazis or have ever accidentally killed their children, since I seem to have those covered). Drop me an email if you've got a suggestion or a good story to tell.

Look at me! Not only am I subjecting you to writing about writing, which is always fascinating, but I'm also letting you research my next book for me, too. My car's kind of dirty if anyone feels like coming over to wash it. Just saying.

Of mermaids and aphasia

Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

Schuyler loves mermaids. If you ask her, she'll tell you that she's a mermaid.

We were at Target today, buying much-needed clothes for her, and as we wandered the store, we ended up in the movies section. When she found the dvd of The Little Mermaid, we realized that Schuyler never actually seen it. She'd seen the crappy tv series version, but never the movie itself. We got it for her, because we're swell.

I don't remember when I saw the movie originally; when it came out in 1989, I was in college and, to be completely frank, I was mostly drunk. I doubt very seriously that I was seeing a great many Disney films. Still, it's definitely been a few years since I'd seen The Little Mermaid, long enough that I'd forgotten the deal that Ariel makes with Ursula, the giant, squid-legged, fat villainous drag queen, in exchange for giving her some legs.

Schuyler was already captivated by all the mermaids. But when Ariel had her voice taken away, something occurred to Schuyler, something that in all these years she's never actually come out and addressed with us on her own initiative.

For the first time in her life, Schuyler told us that she can't talk.

She pointed to the television and then pointed into her open mouth while shaking her head. She then pointed to herself and did the same thing. "I don't talk," she said over and over again in her strange, no-consonant language that we can usually understand but which is pretty much Martian to the rest of the world.

She then watched the rest of the movie with deep interest. When Ariel got her voice back, Schuyler turned and looked at us with an unreadable expression, as if waiting for an explanation. I couldn't tell if she was sad or just calling bullshit.

After the movie was over, Schuyler clearly wanted to discuss the issue further. She continued to tell us with her gestures that, like Ariel, she also had no voice. When Julie pointed out to her that she had her device to speak for her, Schuyler very carefully searched for just the right words, typing out "no mouth" at first, but frowning and deleting her unsatisfactory choice. I don't think she knew exactly what she wanted to say, only that she saw something that resonated with her own life, and wanted us to understand.

I felt (and still feel, actually) a heavy sadness about the evening, the same way I do every time Schuyler faces a harsh reality. Still, I can't help but think that something really important and positive happened tonight, even if it was accidental.

That's usually how Schuyler's big moments happen. They sneak up on us, and leave us pondering them long after Schuyler has grabbed the evening's carefully chosen dolls and climbed the ladder to her bed.

I can only imagine what she dreams about. Perhaps she speaks in her dreams, as she does in mine.

Autobiography

Schuyler (b&w)
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

This was sent home by Schuyler's teacher, exactly as it was printed off from the BBoW. Apparently the impulse toward memoir is genetic.

---

I am a girl. I am 7. I have no brothers. I have no sisters. My birthday is December 21st. I like to dance and play with puppys. I love puppy.

Schuyler

---

I wonder if they were specifically asked about siblings. If not, that part's a little poignant.

It’s in the hands of Fate and UPS now

I was starting to get a little twitchy, editing and re-editing, adding little bits and generally obsessing over the manuscript. When I finished the manuscript last week, it stood at about 85,000 words; since then, it grew by another 2,000.

I finally decided today that enough was enough. As of about 8:30 tonight, three copies were on their way to New York; two for St. Martin’s and one for my agent. They should get them in about a week.

I feel like I just sent a kid off to college. What do I do now? I guess I’ll start another book, what do you think? Here goes nothing...

Eighty-four

Schuyler
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

We had our monthly AAC Parents Meeting last night at Schuyler's school. It's always an interesting and humbling experience, spending time with other box class parents. It serves as a reminder that most of them (well, all of them, actually, if I'm not mistaken) have tenacious and smart kids who, in their own individual ways, are nevertheless either slightly or significantly worse off than our daughter. Schuyler is the luckiest of unlucky kids.

Before the meeting began, the two members of Schuyler's Assistive Technology team who have been working with her from the beginning pulled us aside and said they think Schuyler is ready to move up to the next level on her device. "She's reached the point where she needs more words," they said.

Her device is currently set to display 45 keys at a time. (I forget how many it showed when she first started using it, but she was moved up to 45 shortly after she started school in Plano.) This new setting will bring it up to 84 keys, which is the Big Box of Words' maximum setting. Schuyler will be using the same setting as adults who use the same device.

Well, I can't begin to tell you how happy we are, happy and proud and most of all vindicated. Last month, I was writing in the book about her frustrating days in her little Austin-area school two years ago, so the whole experience is still newly fresh in my mind. That old school district insisted Schuyler would be unlikely to be capable of using this advanced device. Although they obviously never said so, we always suspected the reason they kept lowballing her had as much to do with budget constraints as anything else.

Rather than admit that or deal with the funding issue head-on, they claimed Schuyler was incapable of using the BBoW at all. ("Not educationally necessary" was the phrase I remember most vividly.) Not even two years later, she's moving up to the most advanced setting. It's worth saying again, and if you're a parent out there with misgivings about what your kid's teachers are telling you, I hope you're listening.

They were wrong, and we were right.

And if we'd stopped fighting that fight, Schuyler would be sitting in a cramped little special ed class in Bugfuck, Texas, trying to teach sign language to her teachers who didn't know it and using little pictures on laminated cards to express the most remedial concepts. She wouldn't be educated so much as taken care of, and when she reached the age of seventeen, she would leave them, not as a high school graduate but rather as Not Their Problem.

Instead, she's in first grade with the other seven year-olds, doing the same work and taking the same tests and obsessing over the same Hello Kitty merchandise as all the other seven year-olds.

Her AT team set up the BBoW so that a button in the upper left hand corner would allow her to easily transition back and forth between the 45 count and 84 count setups. It's an all new language, the 84, and it's going to take some time for her to learn it. But Schuyler being who she is, spent the evening on the 84 side, exploring and trying stuff out, only grudgingly going back to 45 when she needed to say something. She's fascinated by the advanced mode. She's going to do what she did with the 45 and with the device itself when she first got her hands on it. She's going to figure it out and make it hers.

Underestimating Schuyler will bite you on the ass, every single time. She doesn't like being told what to do, and she doesn't like being treated like she's less. It's becoming clear that she might just be the smartest one of us all.