The other day a class of teenage girls were reading an article on food and the word 'average' came up. ''What's this word 'average'?'' one of them asks me and to save time I translated it into Spanish. There was a sea of blank looks as one by one they all told me this word doesn't exist. I looked it up in the dictionary thinking that I'd got it wrong but they still weren't convinced. Then I realised. There is no average in Spain. There is no average man, woman, child, situation, day and so on. Everything is one extreme or the other. Almost always the opposite amount or degree beyond what is normal or reasonable. Nothing is ever a dull moment. I tried to give examples of 'average' and this kicked off a discussion that anyone new to the scene would think was a riot what with the whole class shouting to be heard. This can be very draining to an outsider or invigorating if you join in and try to drown out everyone else's opinion with your own. Whatever it is, it is life affirming and nothing average about it. In the end I drew an imaginary line and chose intelligence as the word we would use to get an understanding of it all. I started to say that above the line was highly intelligent, genius etc but was stopped short by one girl who interrupted and said 'oh I get it, and below that line is what most people are, 'stupid!'  ( Thank God for punctuation!)