I was aware of being the smartest person in the class in first grade, but even then I suspected that I was not really bright but that the others were very slow. [By the 4th grade she was so widely read that] I did not realize then why I felt left out and thought it was due to some personality flaw. I often thought that I was really stupid because I couldn't understand why teachers taught things that I thought were obvious. I thought the other children were smarter because they saw complexities that I now know never existed. I had a hard time understanding other children. It never occurred to me that I felt different because I was ahead of them intellectually. For example, in class they would ask questions about what the teacher was saying. I thought what the teacher was saying was so obvious that it needed no explanation - yet there were kids who kept asking for more explanations. Instead of realizing I had grasped the concepts quickly or knew them already, I thought I was missing some subtle point that confused others and I was too dense to even see it!
I remember that thought.
