Will You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

There are all kinds of people walking this earth. Most of them--like me--are fairly unremarkable. That isn't to say they don't have interesting characteristics. Everyone does. But the older I get and the more people I encounter, the more I realize just what a rare and precious commodity common sense actually IS.

There several different types of intelligence...depending on who you ask, there are anywhere from seven to nine specific types of intelligence identified within the field of psychology, and they really can tell us a lot about ourselves and how we learn most effectively. For example,  I tend to score highest on the verbal/linguistic and musical subtypes. But for some of us, these multiple intelligence subtypes can be generalized a little more simply.

Common sense. It SOUNDS like such a simple thing, doesn't it? It isn't. It's actually quite elusive and hard to come by, which is why when I find someone with any measurable amount of real common sense--be it friend or lover--I have an unfortunate tendency to want to hang on for dear life.

Anyone can pay money for a monkey education. They may go to a good school, they may study and make good grades and even graduate with honors and might excel in their field. They may make a killer salary and be good at what they do...and while I can absolutely respect all of that, here's the thing: they may still be practically helpless when they step out of their office at the end of the day.

What I really want to know is, do you have to have information spoonfed to you in a neat, organized manner, or can you pick it up in bits and pieces on the fly and put it all together later? Are you the type that asks if this will be included on the test? Can you pick up all of those random social cues and participate in that witty banter?

The ability to think quickly and abstractly is such a beautiful thing. To me, that's the very definition of common sense. Some people have a lot of it. Some have a little. Some have none. And maybe I'm wrong, but it does seem like practical intelligence is becoming somewhat less common. Here's the thing...if you have it, you need to be around other people who have it, too. Because you may not have very much patience for people without any. In fact, there are days when you may be secretly hoping for the Zombie Apocalypse just to hurry up and sort it all out.