Two Contradictory Ideas

For many years, decades actually, I held in my mind two contradictory notions about my father. First, that he had never gotten beyond the eighth grade. And second, that he had played on the Wichita East High School golf team. One would think that a mind as sharp as mine would have struck upon this paradox long before his death, but the revelation of my obliviousness didn’t strike me until I was sitting with my mother in the office of the mortician, answering questions about my father’s life. “Wait a minute” – I thought to myself as my mother answered the question of how far he had gone in education with “high school” – “I’ve always believed he never got beyond eighth grade.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald quotingly said that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.” I don’t think he had my mind in mind at the time. But then he probably was talking more about abstract ideas than facts. It’s one thing to believe that there exists intelligent life elsewhere in the universe (based on theory), while also doubting that it does (based on lack of empirical evidence). It’s another thing to believe that one’s father never got beyond the eighth grade (figment), while also believing he played high school golf (fact). But the mind is a curious thing, and it’s just as likely – perhaps more likely – to hold the latter as it is to hold the former. Sadly, there just aren’t that many Fitzgeraldian first-rate minds. Certainly you aren’t reading one of them now.