My 72-year-old mother was the "smart one" in our family and self taught. Because of her vocabulary and her love of learning, she seemed smarter than her artist brother and her other brother that was our town's mayor for a while. She couldn't afford college, but became a legal secretary and later worked her way up in civil service jobs. She always knew all the answers, loved to watch Jeopardy, always read a lot, and loved crossword puzzles and was thrilled when she discovered that my then 4 year old son loved trivia games and was a word nerd just like her. She was not surprised that he could read at 2 1/2 and certainly didn't think there had to be something wrong with him because he could read early and was not very coordinated. She could also do mental math very quickly like my son, until the day she had routine surgery and had what doctors think were mini strokes that caused her dementia and left her with no short term memory and unable to learn anything else for the rest of her life, including her grandson's name even though she sees him every day.
My dad used to let my mother do most of the talking and I thought for years that she was smarter than him, but two of his brothers became engineers. I think he was just gifted in other ways.
I was usually one of the youngest in my classes, but usually made straight A's, except for PE where the best I could do was a B. People at high school reunions said they remembered me as one of the smart kids, but I was not as smart as my mother or my son and I was extremely shy and sensitive to the point that I did not speak at all at school, only at home. I think dealing with my anxiety was almost like having a learning disability, yet I did well on tests.
I was smart enough and sensitive enough to feel different as a child. I can understand a little of what my son is going through when he says he feels like he was being shunned by some of the kids his age because he is different.
I had only one of the overexcitabilities, where he has all five.
I think my husband is smarter than I am. He has most of the overexcitabilities but he is definitely not as sensitive as me or our son so I get blamed for that.
