Innocent until proven guilty. How about, dumb until proven smart?
For anyone who has ever sensed this, allow me time to relate.
I still remember my dearest auntie. She was one of Papa’s four sisters, the middle school teacher whom I saw only tirelessly lead as a mother, wife, and teacher.
Aside from Mama’s lady mannerisms, my aunt’s strength in character was the foundation of my becoming.
This one afternoon, I saw and watched her walking toward our home with the help of her cane.
I knew what had drawn her to make this surprising visit.
It wasn’t really a surprise to me at all. I had just been at her home earlier that day.
Although only around the age of five, angry with my brother, I took it upon myself to leave my auntie’s to follow my own memory recollection of the backroads to get back to our own home.
I still recall Papa standing from a distance, just watching me as I continued to walk toward him, our home awaiting quietly in the background.
When he asked me what I was doing, I boldly told him I walked back home by myself.
He stood there with his usual hands rested on his hips as he just watched me walk closer and closer.
I was too angry to care if I would get in trouble. Remaining silent, Papa must have sensed my thoughts as I walked past him to go inside.
Without a phone at that time to communicate, I knew my auntie had come to see if I had made it back okay.
My own annoyance of my brother created the energy force I needed to take it upon myself to leave my auntie’s as I stated I would.
Both seeing that I had made it back home safe, my auntie and Papa must have somehow been impressed because I could only recall both smiling, recanting my audacity to do what I had done that morning.
I still recall my auntie laughing with Papa, actually looking at me with admiration rather than fury and disappointment.
Before I knew it, Auntie wanted me to show my Papa how I counted with my hands behind my back.
Auntie asked that I tell Papa what my reason was for placing my fingers behind me. I recall stating something about-so no one could see I was trying to figure out an answer from my hands and not my brain.
Both laughed with such great pride for me.
Even then I thought to myself that what they seemingly both were so proud about was really not a big deal. My actions were not ingenious.
Still, they made me feel as if I was so.
Since then, those planted moments empowered me to believe more of myself than what others could see.
I have always had this inner challenge to figure things out.
Since then, I somehow could walk into a room and feel I was already shining. Not because I thought to be amazing above others. It was rather that I was eager to do amazing things.
Then, the world sees you; your unhidden joy being watched.
I learned much too early that the world is always ready to challenge your heart, mind, body, and spirit.
I learned much too early that in your excitement for love, life, and laughter, the world is prepared to try and disappoint.
If there were ever a time where I fought hardest as a child against the world, it was when we lived for two years in this one town.
If I could look back and think to explain, I would describe that time as being grateful to not have run out of matches to relight my candle each time I felt it being put out.
There are 365 days in a typical year. Times two years- that’s a lot of matches to keep in your pocket at the end of each day.
I experienced classmates of mine telling me they would play with me during recess, but they weren’t allowed or people leaving the apartment pool we would swim in just as soon as they saw us entering.
Whereas my auntie, the loving teacher who looked at me with gentility and utmost belief, I recall watching a teacher roll her eyes with disappointment as I was introduced as her new student.
My burning candle that morning, excited to have another chance to shine at a new school- blown out; my heart trying to find matches.
There is thing song, “Homely Girl”, by UB40, that to this day still pinches my very soul to much of my connection to the song as if the song saw me then.
The chorus line, “The teacher would ask a question and you, would always raise your hand…But somehow you never got your turn, And my eyes would fill with water, inside I’d burn…”
I kept raising my hand. They’d see me someday.
I saw two worlds within less than a decade I had been in this world.
One side is where a child could feel like the biggest star in a room and another where no matter how bright you are shining, those around you will make sure to do everything to dulll out any brightness you may think to illuminate.
And when you did speak, because, as I have learned to embrace about myself, I speak metaphorically- the mind that rebels against a straight answer, I had to not only persevere to be heard, but push through to be understood.
Is it my inability to clearly convey or your failure to comprehend?
This became my silent question to self-reflect upon as time progressed in life.
In my most recent time to volunteer at a scoring table of a sporting event, a mother, also volunteering next to me, muttered how men just condescendingly try to go out of their way to prove you wrong, convinced and thus, trying to convince you that indeed and without doubt, you are stupid.
I wanted to hug her (but I was busily scoring).
In my silence of having felt this as a woman (to add, an emigrated, minority girl to start), I suppose I needed someone to acknowledge this out loud.
She went on to say that it’s worse in some other sporting events as well.
It is not that I wanted to finally commiserate with someone in some dramatic way. Just to hear someone else point out that very same inkling you’ve had for some time just helps you to feel you aren’t making up your own impressions.
I’m not quite done with my latest book I am currently reading, “Einstein” by Walter Isaacson yet, but I couldn’t help directly write onto pages of what I felt was so relatable to Einstein’s experiences.
While highly different in message and delivery, the book , “Caste: The Origins of Our Discomfort” by Isabel Wilkerson, so graciously given to some of us by our superintendent, while troubling in so many ways due to its depth of historical pains, also gave me much comfort in similar ways.
Einstein has been renowned to have greatly contributed to the Theory of Relativity. He was never given such Nobel Peace Prize recognition. To add, respectfully to note, he had struggles in finding an instructional position after college as even his own former professors would not hire him.
Albert Einstein! Denied not just a position, but positions to teach! And yet, years later (ten years later, if I am correct!) he was finally awarded the Noble Peace Prize for general and relative works in physics.
Though nominated for years, Einstein simply had been passed over for not having enough proof of evidence as to his claims.
Fascinating and somewhat maddeningly comforting to me at the same time.
Somehow I hear him laughing now as he hears recitations of intellectual quotes he suggestively spoke or the ubiquitous pictures of him, not to add all the many iconic images of him to suggest as the universal symbolism of “genius”.
In the book, Caste, to point out that there are those who not only clearly undermine you, but make a point to do so, was much of a great message I believe many need to read.
To this day, I am still hungry for more knowledge of what this world has to give me.
No pain. No gain.
Sometimes, with truth, comes the price of pain. However, it is within the truth so much strength is carried on, knowledge built up to the point of inexplicable pyramids along with spoken, but unfound mysteries.
It is only in listening to all that the harvest of purest knowledge can take place. The weeds must mature with all the grain.
Whenever now I encounter people who present themselves to know more, I let them.
This is what teaching and parenting for so many years have taught me.
Sometimes people are feeling some kind of way and most of the time they just want to not feel less than you.
That training of that feeling. When you can’t handle the undermining you feel inside, you exert your fighting stance in your own way.
This very well could mean someone doing their best to put you in your place either through their actions, words, or both.
To those who are convinced of their own beliefs for whatever reason they may hold, you are dumb until proven smart.
What would Clark Kent have to say to that?
I would think this:
While inside I can feel to be more than what you know, my senses that you have already made up what you think to be right gives me peaceful victory.
You let a person talk enough, their own wrongs will be proven without you uttering much of anything to contribute.
Even if you weren’t trying to battle to be in a war, when waged by others, silent victory is at its best.
I am grateful for those like my auntie who saw the best in me.
When the world continues to attack your heart, mind, body, and spirit, trying to hammer down doubts of your potential, I see sadly my students and even my own children begin to surrender to the blows.
There is an impenetrable Superman mind in all of us. We just have to be okay being the insignificant Clark Kent to the world.
Kryptonite has nothing on you as long as you stay close to the Sun.
