Idiot Savant Definition:
a person affected with a mental disability who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (as mathematics or music).
My husband, Mike, is an idiot savant. This might strike you as lucky for me, in that we can go on road trips to Vegas and make millions thanks to Mike’s card counting skills, but he isn’t that kind of savant. Definitely. Definitely not. Nor can he pluck music from the air and instantly create it on piano, or calculate the size of the universe. He’s not that useful sort of idiot savant.
Mikey is an idiot savant in the truest sense of the word.
My husband is an Idiot Idiot Savant. A savant at being an idiot.
Shortly after meeting Mike’s mother for the first time, she was crying laughing at something he said. We’re talking break out the Depends, call-the-ambulance-this-woman-has-stopped-breathing crying laughing. Consequently, almost the first thing I ever heard her say to him was “You’re so stupid!”
I remember being jarred by the comment. What sort of mother calls her son stupid? Seemed a little harsh. Especially when she was turning all purple like that. She had to really try to call him stupid.
I totally understand now. Now I say that phrase every day.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you may have a taste of what an idiot idiot savant Mike is, but now, Animal-Channel like, I’ve captured the essence of it on film for the first time. Well, actually, he captured it. Because he’s an idiot.
Idiot Savant Theatre Presents: Attack of the Falcon
The Scene:
INT: Night
Mike says he’s going to stay up to watch baseball. I rise from the sofa and head to bed, because it is late (for me) and because I’d rather go to the prom with Pinhead from Hellraiser than watch baseball.
As I begin to fall asleep, Mike walks into the darkened bedroom. On the bureau across from the bed, just inside the door, there is a phone/camera perched on a neat little tripod I bought for making Vine videos. It is there because we’ve been trying to nanny-cam-style capture the dog, who sneaks off and humps my pillow whenever he gets frustrated. (I didn’t say we weren’t both idiots.)
Mike sees the camera and announces we’re going to make a sex tape.
I immediately know I am in trouble. Not because Mike has any interest in making a sex tape. Exactly because I know he has no interest in making a sex tape.
Mike announces there is one rule to the sex tape: I have to refer to him as “Falcon.” I have no idea where this came from. He has never asked me to call him Falcon before. Cheetah, sure, but never Falcon.
*sigh*
He is so stupid.
Mike starts the video.
Shit. Here we go…
I start chanting a fevered litany of “Michael. Michael. MICHAEL” as he approaches me, but there is no stopping the Falcon. He pretends to be a bird of prey repeatedly attacking me. Which tickles. A LOT. I doubt falcons tickle their prey as a rule, but he’s an idiot savant, not a falcon savant.
Sadly, what you can’t see because the video is dark is that in-between attacks he turns to the camera and smiles like a lunatic to show that he knows he is being filmed because that exactly what a person actually making a sex tape would not do. Let me be clear: he isn’t pretending to be a falcon, he is pretending to be a porn star named Falcon making the worst porn of all time. If you asked Mike to make a sex tape, this is what you would get.
Be sure to have on the volume as you watch the Falcon caught on tape, as it is my laughter that really elucidates what daily life with an idiot savant is like. If you’re at work don’t have it too loud because it will sound like someone is being murdered in your cubical, and after all the time you took hiding the evidence of the person you really did murder in your cubical, discovery now would be sad and ironic.
Oh, and don’t forget to win a wine cartoon tee shirt!