There was this guy I went to college with ‘A’. He had a clean shaven bald head, looked like Mr. Clean, and was maybe 6 foot 4 and jacked. ‘A’ was a bit of an Alpha male to the point of being a bit of a bully to people to establish his dominance. He was in my friend group and whenever we went out in a group he would always answer questions on our behalf and generally seemed confident. ‘A’ got on my nerves a few times but I am generally non-confrontational so I would never say anything. One night a group of us went out to a bar and had a pretty good time. About halfway through this gorgeous shy looking red-head walked in and walked straight up the bar. On her way ‘A’ waved at her and said, “hey ‘B!’” but she averted her eyes and kept walking straight up to the bar as if she didn’t see him. I was pretty sure no one else noticed this and looked at his face. ‘A” looked straight down at the table looking pretty sheepish for a few seconds before regaining his composure and getting up to dance.

I kept this in the back of my mind for a while but I started thinking he might have some low confidence. I watched him for a bit and noticed whenever we were talking about anything science or math related he would never join in the conversation and would try to change the topic. I love talking about science and I admit I might be annoying sometimes when I am excited about something. After a couple of weeks he started being rude to me just in small enough ways that I could laugh it off but after a while start getting to me. I am not witty at all so I could never defend myself very well or say anything back.

Fast forward to a party in the common room and he starts commenting making fun of the beer I was drinking or something else as trivial. I ignore it for a while and we move on to playing a board game. Of course he starts making fun of the game we are playing and I am pretty pissed. Now I can’t remember what exactly it was but I start asking some questions about science and start a discussion about chemistry, then we move on to physics, and then we start talking about Astronomy and it was all going great and I could see ‘A’’s face. He looked like hell and I was reveling in it. I watched him the entire time and waited for him to say anything, anytime he did I would interrupt him and change the topic. I did this until a couple times and made eye contact with him the last time I did it. I saw him completely deflate and we went to sit down.

I can still see his picture his face when he realized what I was doing and feel bad about it because I think he was self-conscious about his intelligence.