Best Member of my Family?

Lowbrow Answer: Me
Look at me. I line my shelves with foreign DVDs, Radiohead is my favorite band, I pretend to enjoy reading Adorno, and I write a pretentious blog each day that tries to classify society using pseudo-intelligence. I'm the epitome of a blue-collar prole trying desperately to fake elitist sensibilities. I'm like that tramp Anne Boleyn.

Need more evidence? Here are some things I enjoy: Dancing in hip-hop clubs, "Smokin' Aces," fireworks, boobs, Applebees, Laguna Beach, ESPN.com, Seal's song "Love's Divine," NASCAR Racing, and rugby tackles. Say it with me now: low. brow.


Middlebrow Answer: My Parents, Paul and Paula
My mom went back to school at the age of 50 to get not one, but two masters degrees. What a monster. She's the CFO of a new company and slaps corporate tax law around like it were a red-headed stepchild. My dad designed high-tech machines that measured the interaction between radiation and matter as a function of wavelength, given energy as a variable once the relationship E = hν for photons was realized. It's called spectroscopy. You may it by its other name: "What-are-you-talking-about-what-the-hell-is-a-photon?"

The problem with my parents is that they're too happy. They bought some land in New Hampshire, built a house on it, and like to watch the sunset. They spent their evenings playing cards and relaxing instead of discussing the dialectic of commerce in 17th century Ireland or writing papers on the Greco-Turkish cultural diaspora. Basically, they smiled too much. Come on Moms and Pops, put down those Vodka-Tonics and pick up a copy of "The Communist Manifesto." You've got work to do.


Highbrow Answer: My Brother and Sister-in-Law, Greg and Emily
There are few things more highbrow than being paid to study, but that's just what The University of Michigan does for my brother. And it's not one of those bullshit PhD's like English Literature or Psychology. It's in something called Operations Research, which encompasses stuff like measure theory and stochastics. Basically, the kid does math so highbrow that it doesn't even involve numbers. Good lord.

Oh, and if that weren't enough, he's married to a woman who is just as good at math as he is. She also gets paid to study, only with her, it's for those actuarial exams that are impossible to pass. I'm terrified that their offspring will be some kind of super babies that will take over the world at the age of seven and enslave us all, forcing us to do long division in deep caves until our eyes melt.