[April 29, 2026] Learning your limitations can be tough on the ego. My first big clue that I wasn’t “smart” came in 7th grade history class. The teacher assigned us to memorize the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
We couldn’t argue with him. Memorizing stuff was normal back then—like learning the ABCs, counting to 100, or saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn’t like it, but I was just a kid from the Deep South.
The Preamble has 52 words. We learned it sets out the Constitution’s main goals and guiding principles. The teacher made us practice saying it after gym class. We had no idea why.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
—Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, approved September 17, 1787.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t memorize those 52 words. I’d always mix them up and spit out nonsense. If Candid Camera had been there, I would’ve been the laughingstock of junior high.
Kids who struggle with this often have learning difficulties like dyslexia, ADHD, or working memory challenges. Back in the early 1960s, I was just “dumb.” I had trouble staying focused. Maybe it was a mental thing, or maybe I was just distracted by what was happening outside the classroom or thinking about playing with my dog.
Later in school, I worked hard to find other ways to learn. Counterintuitively, discovering my weakness eventually helped me. It pushed me to use different strategies, tools, and my strengths. I turned out to be good at understanding processes and systems. Once I put information into those systems, I could remember much better.
When you realize you’re not “smart,” maybe it’s time to start looking at strategies to overcome the weaknesses you possess.
Albert Einstein gives us a hint in how to overcome not being smart, even though he was a genius. “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
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Please read my books:
Ha Ha, another classic from Gen. Satterfield. In this case he is showing us that we can “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and succeed. He got slapped in the face early in life about his intelligence, and then progressively worked other strategies to overcome. Many would have stopped right there and quit or gone into criminal behavior. We can assume, I think correctly, taht it was his religious Christian background that prevented him from going into crime but to instead push ahead anyway and find other means of getting his jobs done.
Better to realize this early in life and be disappointed than to be an adult and ignore the reality.