Dealing With the Myopic

I've had glasses since I was in high school, I think...maybe even before that: one of those genetic defects I got instead of intellectual genius. I'm nearsighted, and since getting my nose smashed in and my glasses broken, I usually use contacts (I know, it doesn't matter who I know!). Sometimes, though, I think I see 20/20 and other people are blind: sightless to their own biases and unwilling to apply anything that resembles logic to a situation. This locktstep of "anything different is less," "that's what everyone says," or "they're all alike" just drives me nuts, and I realized the other day that I have altered my personal presentation as a result. Not tht I'm non-judgemental in all areas, either. I'm casting general stones today as specific people like Michael D. and Father J.
While I'm admittedly not a genius, I'm not totally without intellectual capacity and wide-ranging interests. I'll admit that there probably aren't many teachers of English and physical education who've also worked for years as a disc jockey, been a janitor at McDonald's, a city alderman,an orderly on a locked ward (some might think teaching is like this), worked on road construction and farms as well as guiding tours of historical landmarks.
I am not particularly interested in public opinion...I prefer my own research and the counsel of people I can trust. Thus, I would like to think that my life has some meaning and that what I've chosen to do has been done for positive reasons.
Enter Fr.J, our parish priest years ago. He had a background in English literature, and he and I had thoughtful discussions concerning authors, books and historical perspective. He thought me to be erudite and insightful since I was at that time teaching English and possessed a master's degree. That is, until he discovered that my master's degree was in administration of physical education and athletics: we never had another meaningful discussion. I was unworthy, it would seem.
As a physical education teacher, I was constantly ducking under a barrage of snide remarks about getting turf toe from merely "kicking the ball out" for class. Teachers of academic subjects would ask me how it felt to be "stealing" money from the district: and none of them voted High School Teacher of the Year as I was. Bitter? nah...well, maybe a little. But it was Michael D. who sent me off on this tangent recently.
I hadn't seen him for five years or so though we had gotten together regularly before I moved 25 miles away. Catching up involved what I was currently doing (following a handshake which he said was "too forceful"); when I noted that I tutored athletes at the university, he commented, "Oh yeah, those guys that can't do ABC's or numbers." He reads a few news stories about athletics programs that defy regulations, enlist illiterate performers to cast them aside once "basket weaving" classes are finished, and hire people like me to complete academic work FOR athletes and proceeds to make the huge jump to implicting me in the same kind of activity.
At last count, there were eight types of intelligences, and we are not all gifted with the same ones to the same degree. What IS it about the kinesthetic intelligence that causes people to be narrow-minded? Is numeric or linguistic intelligence that much better that types cannot co-exist to a certain degree?
See, I'd like to think I possess more than one kind of intelligence, in varying degrees, of course.
Maybe I'm just sensitive because I feel inferior to those people in some way.
Maybe they're just idiots.
From now on, though, I'm just admitting to being a tutor for university students.