I learned something odd about myself this weekend. (Um, keep comments to yourselves please!)

While we were helping Brandy with her project, we were discussing what we used to do in kindergarten. I was a bit of a precocious child. I could read when I was four. I had oodles of books. I got tons of encouragement from my parents, as well as two aunts who happened to be teachers, and I watched Sesame Street and The Electric Company constantly. (Allow me a moment of wistfulness for the good old days of children’s television. None of that Barney crap. I actually learned stuff! Letters, numbers, Spanish. What Silent E does. How to make an adverb by adding “-ly.” What the ladybugs 12 brought to the ladybug picnic. 😉 Yes, folks, I learned all of this on TV….but I digress…)

“I remember that my kindergarten teacher didn’t believe that I could read,” I said to my mom.

“That’s because you pretended you couldn’t read,” my mom told me.

What? No really, what?

“I did?”

“Yes,” my mom said. “The other kids couldn’t read yet, and you didn’t want to be different. So you pretended.”

Whoa. I had no recollection of this whatsoever.

Here’s the thing that really confuses me…where on earth did I learn such behavior at five? Where did I pick up on the idea that it was bad to be different and I needed to “fit in?” Gah. No wonder middle school was so painful.

This blog entry brought to you by the letters N and Q and the number 4.