My mother really tried to make me stupid like she thought women should be. Her etched-in-stone philosophy regarding men, she instructed when I was about ten years old, was that they were the best in every field. Then she would go on about the “best chefs,” “the best athletes,” “the best this and the best that.”
Luckily, I fell out of the womb as a questioner from the first day. I think I probably questioned the delivering doctor why there were no women in his field.
But my mother went on about placing me at the bottom of any barrel of idiots. I once told her in middle school or so that I knew what came next when I wrote a sentence. She didn’t hear me, though, because she was too busy doormatting around the kitchen. Later, when I returned to school in my late forties (I finally decided maybe I wouldn’t flunk), I mentioned that I had gotten an A in some class. Without missing a beat, she asked if this was a legitimate school. What a pathetic woman…
