Are You The Smart One?

Are you the smart one or the athletic one? asked Dr. Habrin, our dentist. He had just started peering into my ten-year-old mouth. My brother had the first appointment that day, then me, then my sister. They were out in the waiting room, reading Highlights for Children or Archie comic books. Our mom would pick us all up later.

I shrugged. I knew the answer, but I also knew the answer was shameful. Luckily, shrugging was an acceptable response because my mouth was open and he was already poking around for cavities.

I always had cavities, every visit, every six months. The water in our town wouldn’t be fluorinated for a few more years. Dentists didn’t have the topical fluoride treatments that kids get today. We didn’t use fluoride toothpaste, even though Crest and Colgate were widely available by then. For some reason we used a toothpaste called Stripe, which as I recall came out of the tube with narrow red stripes at zero and one-eighty, and narrow green stripes at ninety and two-seventy. Tasted pretty good and looked dashing, but didn’t do much for cavity prevention.

I also ate a lot of candy. At our house there were open dishes of candy on the small hutch in the dining room. There were bags of candy and a box of Triscuits in my mom’s station wagon in the center of the front (bench) seat, within easy reach of the driver and passengers, all of whom frequently partook. There were also dog treats, once our second dog came along. The first one, the dachshund, hated the car. I ate Pop-Tarts for breakfast every day, usually grape or cinnamon, sometimes strawberry when grape and cinnamon were out of stock at the A&P. Never frosted, always toasted. Adult-me takes a tiny bit of pride that sugar-steeped girl-me set a boundary now and then, even one as trivial as, Mom, please don’t buy frosted Pop-Tarts. If they don’t have plain, I’ll eat Cap’n Crunch instead.

While Dr. Habrin no doubt loved me for my lucrative teeth, I wish he’d been more sensitive to the pain of my mother’s neat partitioning of her daughters into The Smart One and The Athletic One. He’d hit a nerve.

Also literally. He believed I didn’t need novocain for the shallower cavities, which he sometimes filled on the same visit as the checkup. I grunted and recoiled. Tears welled up in my eyes, eyebrows tented above. You have a low pain threshold, said my mom when I told her about it afterwards.

It’s true that I was good at brainy. I have an early memory of pulling a couple of kids’ books from the bookshelf and trying to figure out how to read, by myself. I had a couple of books memorized, even to the page turns, and I moved my finger along the words as I pronounced each word. I know now that my error was in thinking that the groups of characters corresponded to the syllables. Thus I ran out of written words before I ran out of spoken words.

So my parents must have had to teach me to read. During summers, mom drove us to the Emmaus Public Library every Tuesday, and I took out as many books as the librarian would allow. Sometimes I had to make two trips to the car. I was a wee thing, could carry only a few at a time.

In kindergarten they didn’t know what to do with me. At the beginning of first grade, they brought in a reading specialist armed with reading-comprehension tests and a big stack of flash cards. The problem was he’d brought only his elementary school flash cards. I got them all right, up through fifth grade reading level. Except one. I said bringing when the card said bring.

How in the world do I remember this? It was an emotionally laden moment. It was shameful. First, bring was probably a third-grade flash card. I knew that word. My goodness, what a silly mistake. More importantly, my results on the test meant that while the rest of the class was learning to read, I had the (dis)honor of circulating through the class, assisting the other kids. No one else had this terrible honor, just me. Having to be the teacher’s reading assistant? Already the shortest kid in the class, I felt even smaller.

In third grade I was assigned the task of re-teaching a new kid to read. He had learned reading through an experimental method called IPA, which taught kids to read using phonetic spellings. Did I mention this was the English language? As far as I can tell, all IPA did for this poor kid was condemn him to learn to read and spell all over again. And I had the (dis)privilege of teaching him, one-on-one, while the other kids read stories.

Granted, they were stupid stories. But still.

My mother said to my brother and sister, there should be places for people like her. Turns out there were such places, even back then, but I digress. Mom set up a division in the family: Mom, Renie and Johnny versus Dad and me.

Before I get too far into this story, I really need to tell you that my brother and sister did very well in school. They were and are plenty smart, both of them. It was a spurious division. And yet it penetrated my bones. My sister’s too. I'm smart, right? she said on a phone call last year. Last year. I was shocked to the core and so sad for her. So hurtful and unnecessary for both of us to carry these unfair labels deep in our bones for so many decades.

One night at dinner, Johnny made the big mistake of telling Dad that his class had learned square roots in math that day, and he didn’t really get it. Dad put on his annoyed professor voice, and explained. I said, oh, I get it! All eyes at the table turned to me, mostly flashing disapproval, and my dad’s conveying skepticism. Johnny said, you do not. He was four grades ahead of me. Dad said, hmmm, and then tested me on square roots of various perfect squares up to 100. I got them right. He said, huh—not anything meaner than huh, which is why he and I were on the same side of the family gulf, instead of my being all alone.

One time in the 1970s, my parents were going through a rough spot, and my mom asked me privately, if your dad and I separate, who would you want to live with? In a calm voice that belied my horror I answered, Dad. She said angrily, well of course you’d choose the person who makes the money. Actually I had chosen Dad because I knew neither of the other kids would.

I knew I wasn’t the kid Mom wanted. That was clear. Dad seemed at least neutral. When I was sixteen, my dad’s mother said, you know, your dad is very proud of you. I was too surprised to answer. It's one of the few moments I remember from my childhood because it was so darned peculiar. Didn't fit with my view of the world.

Dad had a PhD in civil engineering from the University of Illinois. He worked at Bell Labs in nuclear engineering, and later in the early years of semiconductor lithography and packaging. My mom loved his braininess. When she was eighty-one, she said to me, when I married your dad, I never expected he would turn out to be this handsome in his later years. I just thought he’d be a good provider. You should have seen him, six feet tall and 122 pounds.

I’d seen photos of Dad from the early 1950s. He was tall and gaunt. But 122 pounds? That’s not possible, right?

When my son was learning to read, and turned out to be an early reader, I asked my mom, how old was I when I learned to read? She said with confidence, three months old. Her numbers cannot be trusted.

Girls have no right to be that smart, said my mom after the square-root incident. Good luck finding a husband.

It wasn’t just my mom who made smart shameful. Kids back then ostracized high-achieving kids. Academically high-achieving, not athletically high-achieving. The latter were the heroes of the school, revered, put on pedestals. Also literally.

No doubt you’ve gathered by now that I was the smart one, and Renie was the athletic one. Johnny apparently didn’t need a label because he was easily distinguishable from Renie and me, being a boy and a few years older.

Sidebar: About five years ago, Renie and I had a surprisingly long argument about whether Jon is five years older or seven years older than we are. Maybe neither of us is the smart one.

Nested sidebar: I may need to explain that I’m two years older than Renie.

Besides being smart in school and popular, Renie was an athletic star. She was nationally ranked as a gymnast as a little girl. She won medals in competitive diving. She was in a local ballet company throughout her childhood. I sold tickets for her shows at the table outside the auditorium. Shy as heck, but able to reliably make the correct change from a five dollar bill. At least my braininess could be used for good, four times a year.

In contrast to Renie, I was deemed physically…ahem, back then Mom used the past perfect tense of the R word. She said I walked stiffly and stood awkwardly. My arms were never in the right position. When I took dinner plates out of the kitchen cabinet to set the table, I put my thumb on the bottom and my fingers on top. Your hands are r[deleted]ed, said my mom. Probably would have been helpful if she had explained that the stack of plates would be more stable with my fingers on the bottom.

I still take plates out of a kitchen cabinet that way, with my thumb on the bottom. At this point it’s a tiny act of defiance, though my mom has been gone for more than ten years. Haven’t dropped a plate yet. (Jinx.)

During puberty, when every kid on the planet is particularly sensitive about their body, my mom pointed out my flat chest, in case I hadn’t noticed. Sunny-side up, she called my boobs. After my son was born she said, I hope you can breast-feed. Well, I wasn’t that great at it, truth be told. Took a lot of focus to keep the shame out of my breast milk, so it wouldn’t be transmitted to my son.

Mom did like my blue eyes and long eyelashes. Too bad about those glasses, though. That’s what you get from having your nose in a book all the time, she said.

When I was a teenager, my paternal grandmother joined the campaign and told me I was fat. I never weighed more than 130 pounds in those days. It’s true that I tend towards pear-shaped. Any extra pounds always sit between my waist and knees, even now. I can keep better track of them that way.

Speaking of my knees, last night I caught myself telling a friend that my knees are too low on my legs—in other words, my shin bones are abnormally short for my height. For heaven’s sake, I still carry some shame about my body. And I know in my head that my body is healthy and strong. It's just my bones who aren't sure.

A tailor comes in handy, though.

I never joined a sports team in school. I was among the last to be chosen for any physical game on the playground or in gym class. Doubtless I projected the label of Not the Athletic One. Not being chosen reinforced the label.

Shameful to be the smart one and shameful to not be the athletic one.

A year and a half ago I started hiking daily to control pandemic stress, and became accidentally fit. You probably know this if you read my first Water Dog story, the one with the creative title of Water Dog Comma Numeral One. A few months in, I noticed my knees were a little wobbly on steep hills, so I added cycling on alternate days. I resumed swimming after pools opened again, to help with upper body strength and to soothe my spirit with warm, repetitive, meditative laps.

I’ve also taken up pickleball. My friend Lee noodged me into trying pickleball even though I assured her I was demonstrably horrible at racquet sports. I love pickleball! I’m not great at it, but I’m not terrible at it either.

A few weeks ago, someone told Lee that I was super smart. She said, well, I don’t know about that. She might be, but I think of her as an athlete.

[Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts, unfrosted, my favorite until my friend Lexine told me the insides were made from caterpillar guts. I switched to grape.]