What were you like as a kid?

When I was in first grade, and skimming through college astronomy books in the back of the room while the rest of the class was slogging through the Dick and Jane Readers, the teachers came to my parents proposing to jump me up into second (or third) grade.

My dad, who had been jumped a grade in grade school, nixed it. Well, he didn't straight-out nix it; he left the decision up to me, and said he advised against it.

Like me, he was very young for his grade to start out with (he had an October birthday, mine was in September) and when he got to high school, he said, the age difference became a huge deal -- he was always the 'little kid' in every social group. I decided to stay put.

As a result, it was seventh or eighth grade before I encountered one single thing in school I didn't already know.

My sister, three years younger than me, ended up suffering as a result; teachers continually badgered my parents NOT to teach her to read before she got to school.

They didn't, and she struggled. She was frustrated because everything that came apparently effortlessly for me was hard work for her. The teachers started grading her in comparison to brilliant incomparable me, and they flunked her in first grade.

Assholes.

By the time I graduated on to high school she had caught up; once she got to junior high she was acing everything. They offered to jump her back up into her original grade in sixth or seventh grade, but she had already been ostracized by that bunch as the 'dumb girl who flunked,' so my parents said forget it.

Looking back now with 45-some years of hindsight, it probably would have just been better to send her to another school. Or, maybe, when I was in fourth grade and she was in first, put the boot to my butt, jumped me ahead a grade, and said, "OK, the coasting is all over."

 

I wanted to start my oldest son late in school. His birthday is in March and I was worried he would be among the younger kids in his class. My wife accused me of trying to overcorrect for the mistakes my parents made, which is probably 100 percent accurate.

 

I thought the same thing. They should give them to the runners-up. Or, as we like to call them, losers.

 

Lots of child prodigies on this thread.

 

You'll notice how nobody is talking about how well they did in math and science.

 

On good terms with the maths up until high school calculus.
Chemistry was the biggest waste of time I can recall, which is saying something for high school.
You never forget the word that got your ass beat in a junior spelling bee.
Fart's was barrette.
I still think of that when I see one of my wife's around the house.

 

I was a math ace until high school and quadratic equations and complex polynomials. By that time I was so used to breezing through everything without lifting a finger, when I DID have to lift a finger, my default response was, "fuck it."

As a result now I am real good at arithmetic stuff, but once the real math wizards start talking, I have to go sit on the sidelines. My 15-year-old nephew, already in AP math, is kicking my ass. Maybe he can start tutoring me.

I'm still real good at the science stuff that doesn't require a lot of top-level math, but unfortunately, a lot of it does.

 

So, what was the word -- the one that prompted that scene/memory?

 

Sixth grade social studies, and I probably didn't get 100 on the test. I just regurgitated exactly what was in the book.

Since I'd been in the same class with almost everybody since kindergarten, even the other students had told the teacher I had a photographic memory. She didn't believe them, or my parents.

The teacher made me recite the textbook from memory in front of the class... and I'm still not sure she ever accepted I wasn't somehow cheating.

(But I still studied way longer than you did!)

 

As a freshman in HS I finished 2nd in computers and math in the regional World Youth Science and Engineering competition my second year (which was my junior year because I skipped a grade). I also finished tied for first in a regional algebra competition.

 

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/3744905/