Narcissism

I heard an interesting quote last night:

Men are always smarter, braver and accomplished in their memories than in real life ....

Of course, I thought this an interesting thought.
But is it true?
Is it true for me?
So, this morning was spent hauling out my trophy boxes.

Smarter
If you get almost perfect scores on US, European, military, IBM and last test results for IQ, are you smart?
Unfortunately, with stroke damage, it is a mute point, these days.
sigh
But always been dumber than a stump ....

Braver
Is it brave to climb 56 mountains over 14,000 feet?
Or maybe adopting 4 Russian older children?
Or rescuing trapped climbers?
Or crawling and hopping 9 miles on a broken leg?
Or pulling 3 junior highers from a burning building?
Or standing down armed anarchists?
Or preferring a knife to my issued rifle?
Or telling your Nazi father he is headed straight to Hell?
Yup, dumber than a stump!

Accomplished
What I value is not what others value:
I tried out for the Olympic Games twice.
When I was 12, I held the German Men's 2km running record, for 4 months (LOL).
I held longest shot for sub .50 caliber rifle round, for over 30 years!
I climbed most of Colorado's peaks over 14,000 feet tall.
I passed all parts of the Chef's requirements, at 11!, but French law would not allow me to operate an oven.

Never mind, I was already running a croissant oven in my village at the time!
I have a long list of failed attempts to do most things!
My first 14,000 foot peak took 53 attempts to summit!
Yeah, I just don't give up.....

But if I looked for what culture values, I only have a grouping accomplishment.
I created the very first relational and random database manager.
At a time when "databases" were nothing more than sequential files with an index.
Then I rewrote the IBM disk drive operating system to read a random record.
And the royalties for this feat have been much needed these past few years!

So, I guess one ...

Looking back at this little effort to answer the question, I am reminded of many things.
But, as we have qualified, I am not normal in my tenacity.
I do not value what normal men seem to care about.
Been called all manner of names throughout my life to describe me as being dumber than a stump.
But, I can't imagine what it would be like to care, one way or another.

Maybe my left leg is a mite shorter than the right used to be, but I know three people are alive because I was willing to risk the leg.
On cold winter days my right leg throbs, but that is the price of that 9 mile hop and crawl out of the Rocky Mountain National Park.
And my hands ache in winter as well, the cost of millions of lines of code typed and keypunched for decades.

So, not much of a narcissist.
At least nothing has been written ever in this blog, to be boastful!
Maybe I am not the smartest, the bravest, nor the most accomplished but I am usually content.
And content is much to be preferred.
To my way of thinking.