How can you possibly connect to your peers when you have forgotten more than they will ever know? They have nothing to offer you. Every interaction predictable and boring. It must be supremely lonely being the odd one out.
I will tell you what. He probably would have liked to have a girlfriend more than to hang around a bunch of kids in their early twenties treating him like their baby brother, no matter how smart he was. It seems like a very narrow notion of the value of relationships with others if you think that any interaction where you’re not being intellectually challenged is worthless.
I can tell you form experience having a significant other with a sufficient "gap" gets very demoralizing and frustrating. That, or I just can't appreciate what I have.
That can be frustrating, but the kind of isolation you'd get being a young kid in a college milieu would be much worse.
The story goes that Nick the Greek introduced Albert Einstein to his gambling buddies as "Little Al from Princeton," who "controls a lot of the action around Jersey." I've always aspired to be able to move between worlds with that kind of grace.
