I Used to be Smart

I used to be a lot of things but I think being smart is the one I miss the most. Before I had children I was an intellectual. I had esoteric conversations with other childless intellectuals about dialectical materialism and nuclear proliferation. I graduated from High School at 16 and got a college degree in Applied Mathematics. I was WAY smart.

Then one day I woke up, looked at my husband, and said " I think I want to have a baby." My husband, also an intellectual, looked at me like I had grown another head. I told him I was going to go lie down and maybe the feeling would go away. But it didn't, and soon we were flying without a net. My father used to tell me " You know what they call people who have sex? Parents" He was mostly right. And soon enough I was gestating.

This is when I began to loose my mind. First it was the hormones. The cranky, sweaty, I want to eat weird shit hormones. That is when I realized that an alien had taken over my body and I was just along for the ride. I had visions of the scene from "Alien" where the alien rips through the actors abdomen to come out and kill everyone. My mom, a normal person, kept assuring me that this was all normal and that women have been doing this for years. I tried to explain to her that I was an intellectual and there for not cut out for this nightmare but she kept reminding me that I had "wanted" this. Thanks MOM way to have my back.

A funny thing happens when you are pregnant. Your brain goes away. I am not sure where it goes...maybe there is a brain club med somewhere. About the 7th month of my pregnancy it was "suggested" that I stop advising my clients. You see I am a financial advisor, and the company felt that since I was wearing mismatched shoes and sweating on everything maybe it was time for me to go on maternity leave. I was pretty upset that someone thought that I wasn't smart anymore. I mean REALLY! I still thought I was an intellectual. I had not accepted that those days were now gone.

Once the baby was born I discovered that the pediatrician  spoke to me like I had the intellect  of a 5 year old. And when I would speak back to him in the language of medicine that I felt we both spoke he would dismiss what I had to say because I was just a mom. I found this to be very degrading. So then I started to act out. When a doctor would tell me my vomiting child was fine I would aim said child at the doctor. I found that doctors with your child's vomit and diarrhea on them are much more likely to take said illness seriously. Because it is "nothing to worry about" as long as the child is vomiting on ME but once he vomits on the doctor now it is something that needs to be addressed.

Then the children went to school. I discovered that because my kids were not in day care the teachers at school assumed that I was an uneducated dimwit to whom they needed to use small words when addressing.  If I had known when I was smart that being a mom made everyone ASSUME that you were stupid I would have been thinking about the baby thing ALOT longer. I also find it interesting that the school thinks that "smart people" leave their child alone with strangers for money. While stupid people stay home. I may not be an intellectual anymore but damn that just doesn't make sense to me.

Will people EVER stop seeing me as "just a mom" I don't know. But I do know this. The world would stop turning on its axis is all the moms disappeared.


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