Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis or it's characters. I'm just borrowing. Please don't sue I need to be able to feed my Iguana and cats.
A/N: Thanks to my beta readers Rox and Flah7.
Mensa
Part 1 – The Past
Sometimes he felt so stupid! Lt. Colonel John Sheppard was not an unintelligent man. However, sometimes living and working with all these scientists made him feel that way. McKay made him feel especially dense. The man was a mega genius, and unfortunately, he knew it.
Very few people on Atlantis actually knew how intelligent John was. He really surprised McKay that day when he announced that he had taken the test for Mensa and had passed it. The look on the man's face was priceless. He even asked John when he took it. Certainly Rodney was asking to make sure that John wasn't younger than him at the time.
His parents were ecstatic that their son was a genius, their little math wiz. They had started calling him that when he was four and it irritated the hell out of him. By the time he was twelve he was doing calculus and reading on a 12th grade level. At the age of fifteen he graduated from high school and was going off to college. John loved Math, he thought it was fun and he was very good at it. There was also something else John loved. Ever since he was eight years old and had taken his first airplane ride, he had loved to fly. His parents didn't appreciate the airplane and helicopter posters that littered his bedroom walls as a kid. They wanted their little genius to be a famous mathematician when he grew up. His father kept telling him to keep his head in the math books and out of the clouds. John got his Bachelors degree in mathematics at the age of eighteen when most people his age were graduating from high school. His father, always wanting something else to brag about, insisted that John join Mensa. So, to make the man happy he took the Mensa IQ test, he scored a 150. He didn't care one lick about Mensa, he had taken the stupid test to make his father happy. So he opted out of joining the "genius club" as his father had dubbed it. He went on to graduate school and by the time he was old enough to drink he had his Masters degree. Then he dropped the bomb shell.
John's parents wanted him to go on to get his Doctorate but he wanted to join the military and become an Air Force pilot. They were definitely not happy! Well, his mom would love him no matter what he did, he was her baby boy after all. She was just worried that he's get himself killed if he joined the military, his dad was another story. The day John joined the Air Force his father told him to never darken his doorstep again, unless he quit the military and got his Doctorate. The military was fine for other people's son's but not his smart boy, he was destined for greater things. He tried to keep in touch with his mom after joining up but his father found out and was not happy. John hadn't seen his parents in ten years, when he attended his grandmother's funeral. If only his parents could see where he was now.