Rogue35, 50

Amphibious intellectual Amphibious intellectual:

1. (noun) A person who loves self-enrichment, learning about the world, and pursuing truth, but who can also fit easily in a sportsbar or other less intellectual crowds.

2. (noun) A smart frog.

I am one of these.

I grew up fiercely rejecting my family's hyperintellectual tendencies, instead throwing myself into sports and comedy in order to define myself separately from them. However, the older I get the more I find that I was also largely rejecting a significant part of my own true identity.

When I was a child, my mother did not like the idea of me being left-handed and would pay me a dime every time I wrote the alphabet with my right. Although naturally it didn't work, growing up with not just a mother but a world that catered to right-handers made me ambidextrous in a number of different ways. Nature made me left-handed but I was nurtured to be right.

This same idea made me an amphibious intellectual. These days I'm likely to watch a baseball game (my beloved Phillies) and then an episode of Jeopardy. Or perhaps to hear some classical music followed by a trip to a bar to joke with friends. My most intellectual friends don't get the sports and the joking; my blue-collar friends don't understand NPR or Jeopardy. I'm looking for someone else like me who gets both and could hang out with either group.

Can anyone out there relate? And more importantly... why doesn't this site allow me to make paragraphs?