Me not so smart

I am the first to admit my wife is smarter than I am - a lot smarter

If we were in the fish world, she would be a dolphin and I would be a sea sponge. I know that technically neither one are a fish, with the dolphin being a mammal and the sponge being a, well, I don't really know what a sponge is, but the comparison still stands.
She be smart, and I be not so smart.
It is not very often I am called upon to help the kids do their homework. When it comes to math I am about as sharp as a river rock and twice as dense. Me and numbers just do not get along. We never have and likely we never will.
My wife on the other hand is very good with numbers and can figure out where X goes and what it means.
All I know is X goes between W and Y and is not a member of the numerical family. I also know that if you put three Xs together, you are looking at something you probably shouldn't.
But for those with a mathematic capacity greater than that of a turnip, X can mean all sorts of things.
It can mean a variety of numbers and solutions to some of the worlds greatest math challenges. But often you have to mash several letters together to come up with a brilliant mathematical answer that I would not be able to figure out if I had X number of days to do so.
When it comes to helping the kids with math, it is The Missus who shoulders the brunt of the work. She is also in charge of the family accounting. If it were up to me, our finances would show us somewhere between being broke and having a million dollars in the bank.
But I do step in when it comes to English and social studies - both were courses I did well at in school.
English was by far my favourite course all through high school, mainly because I barely had to show up and I still got decent grades. If I had actually studied and applied myself I probably would have received good grades, but being young and not overly bright I decided to just skate my way through English.
I suspect the editor proofing this column wished I would have tried a little harder as well. I did finally knuckle down and study, but it was not until I reached college that my brain finally decided to learn a few things.
My high school math marks were barely passable, and I do mean barely. Once out of the seventh level of hell, er I mean high school, I tried to avoid all math equations that insisted on substituting letters for numbers.
In sharp contrast to my little brain, my wife's big brain brought in a bevy of brilliant grades. She was on the principal's list more than once.
I too made the principal's list one semester, but for an entirely different reason.
We both made the list based on what we were doing in class, but unlike my wife, it was strongly urged I stop doing it.
Anyway, my wife is very smart and that is a good thing. It has rubbed off on our children and with her continued help with their homework, my kids will continue to do well despite my intellectually inferior genes dragging them down.
But in my own defense, I am not a knuckle-dragging Neandrathol with the IQ of a toaster. I was smart enough to graduate high school - barely - and I actually did very well in college.
My grades were near the top of the class both years by actually applying myself and studying.

Perhaps my brain is not so small after all. Who woulda thunk it?