By ALAN GORSUCH

I make no attempt at claiming to be part of the “we” in the statement above. I’ve had twelve years of school (miserable ones), two marriages (somebody was miserable), and five kids (all miserable) to know by now that I am not all that smart. And that’s okay. I don’t need to be smart. Everyone else is.

When I was in grade school, they told us how “we” only use 85% of our brains. Some dumb kid in the back raised his hand (okay, it was me) and asked, “What’s the rest of it for?”

“It’s just gray matter,” was the answer. I didn’t remember asking what color it was, but it’s nice to know. I had no plans on checking.

“Well, if we don’t use it, why is it there?” I asked, followed by another feeble answer. All the smart kids, from far better homes, were turned toward me with their all-too-familiar “you’re an idiot” look on their stupid faces.

“If evolution is true, shouldn’t we be using 100% of our brains by now—or more?” I replied. They all gasped and spun back around to face the teacher, who had the familiar “I’d love to kill this kid” look on her face.

I try to read any and all of the new brain books as soon as they are in print, and here is a tiny encapsulation of what we recently have been learning about the human brain: We knew nothing about it back then, compared to now. The MRI machines have taught us how much we didn’t know. The new fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machine of late runs circles around the previously uber-miraculous device. And guess what? We employ 100 percent of our mainframe. Some people more. Helen Keller, if she were here, would be a prime example. Kim Peek of Rain Man fame, died a while back. Before he did, he spent his days at the Salt Lake City Public Library, reading history books, and please picture this: Kim Peek would have the book open (which is the best way to read one, I think) with ONE EYE on each page! He would read both pages at the same time! Average time? Six seconds. Upon closing the book, the entire book was committed to memory!

He most likely would have broken the fMRI machine. Jeopardy! had said, “No, you’re not coming on the show.”

So look at what we are capable of. And if you have any doubts about how much smarter you are than you used to be, pick up your phone—it’s right there, next to your—yeah, there you go. Okay, so now ask it something—anything. How about you ask it about the location of the James Webb Space Telescope? What’s that? No, not the dark web—James Webb. The telescope.

Oh. Really? That far? Wow. That’s incredible. Almost a half million miles an hour? I didn’t know that. And why not? Because I don’t own a cellphone. But you do. And just think how much smarter we are now than we were a couple minutes ago. Well, you were already smarter because you own a phone (or is it the other way around?) Makes me wonder how much smarter I’ll be tomorrow—my wife just said, “It depends on how much you drink tonight.” The little darling.

I used the only two examples, Helen Keller and Kim “Rain Man” Peek, because of the monumental problems they had to overcome just to live. Their stories are only two in a sea of humanity that were born with odds stacked—to the ceiling—against them! And look what their brains did for them. Not only help them survive, but thrive.

Was it their superior intelligence? Maybe. What it most likely was is adaptation. Every day, we learn more stories and studies on how unbelievably elastic our brains are. All the rest of us, though, are we really stretching our brains? You and I? We’re not, really. We don’t normally get forced into a mental corner to where we truly have to use all of our wits to battle our way out. Because we (well, you) have laptops and cellphones. I ask people like you to look stuff up for me. And thank you. But it’s gotten to the point where people can’t figure out anything on their own. There’s a guy across the street right now, in his yard with a brand-new yellow shovel and a new rosebush. What’s he doing? He’s on his phone, looking up “how to dig a hole” and watching a 20-minute video. And there’s a lady walking her dog—a Great Dane. She lives in a studio apartment a few blocks away. The horse-dog that’s towing her around just stopped. She’d on her phone looking for “how to pick up poop.” A few minutes from now when she comes back the other way, that green bag of doo-doo will be flung into that rosebush that the first guy planted upside down.

Because I don’t have a cellphone, I remember phone numbers. Apparently, I am a rarity. “Wow. That’s cool! How do you do that?” Some just feel sorry for me. “Did you have to learn how to do that in prison?” or “Are you some kind of code-talker?” or “Why the hell do you know phone numbers if you don’t have a phone?”

“Because you do. Would you call this number for me? 253 272 ----?”

You’d be surprised how many people don’t even know their own spouse’s phone number. Their phone knows. But they don’t. Sometimes I can ask five or so guys if they know their wife’s phone number. And to show you how far WE HAVE EVOLVED, there’ll be one guy—the only one that’s smart enough to memorize his own wife’s number—just one out of five. And that idiot just gave me his wife’s phone number!

This essay is an excerpt from Alan Gorsuch’s fourth book, which has not yet been released, Sure, It’s Funny Now, Vol. 2. He is also the author of All The Ways I Found To Hurt Myself Vols I and II, available at Sanford & Son Antiques in Downtown Tacoma.