Gifted Adults?

Very interesting post by novelist/journalist/musician/runner/mother Alisa Valdez Rodriguez. I sympathize with the feeling of not fitting in, though I'm not sure I'd make the same diagnosis--for myself, anyway. I always assume everyone feels out of step with the world in one way or another. However, I think she's suffered an onslaught of Internet negativity due to her position on Castro, which diverges from the usual Cuban exile mentality. One thing I do agree with is her assessment of her young son as gifted. He sounds amazingly intellectually advanced. Here's a snippet (about her, not her son):

After I left the LA Times six years ago - and wrote a long, private resignation letter that certain people (journalists of modest intellect, generally) still like to bring up - I did not understand exactly why I was SO out of step in the workplace and world.

Now, thanks to the wonderful, difficult journey I've undertaken in the effort to understand my son, I know *why* I am perceived as crazy by certain people: I am a gifted adult.

Let me say first that I wish they'd come up with another name for high cognitive ability. "Gifted" has the wrong connotations. It implies ease, joy, blessings, snobbish superiority. In fact, giftedness is a real condition - as real as it's opposite, mental retardation - wrought with a host of issues that make life tricky for most gifted people, myself included. The difficulties lie primarily in the inability to fit in, and in the repulsion those who are unable to comprehend what we are saying seem to have for us and our notoriously open methods of expressing ourselves.