{"id":6721,"date":"2012-05-30T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=6721"},"modified":"2024-05-01T11:05:31","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T15:05:31","slug":"the-smartest-woman-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/30\/the-smartest-woman-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SMARTEST WOMAN EVER"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Ann Wightman<\/strong><\/span> got all As and one B in high school.\u00a0 I think she purposefully got the B to let a boy be valedictorian.\u00a0 That\u2019s how it worked back then; some smart girls didn’t want to stick out academically.<\/p>\n

In 1991, my wife, Alice, called me from the Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia.\u00a0 She was on a canoe trip.\u00a0 She said, \u201cYou\u2019re not going to believe who I\u2019m with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Ann Wightman<\/p><\/div>\n

“Ann Wightman?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes!\u201d<\/p>\n

I often<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 guessed “Ann Wightman.”\u00a0 I had a case of Ann-on-the-brain, even though I hadn’t seen her in 23 years — since high school graduation.<\/p>\n

When my kids were very young, I told them: \u201cThere was this girl, Ann, in my second-grade class who read so many books, the teacher had to put up extra sheets of paper on the wall to track her book reports.\u201d<\/p>\n

I probably ran into Ann after graduation, but didn’t recognize her.\u00a0 Maybe we were at Disney World or O’Hare airport together.\u00a0 I’ve seen everybody at least twice.\u00a0 That’s my theory.<\/p>\n

The Georgia<\/strong><\/span> sighting: Ann was in an alligator-infested swamp with my wife.\u00a0 Alice, via the park pay phone,\u00a0 said, \u201cAnn says your crowd at Brush High was so full of itself\u00a0 — particularly after they went up to Boston and saw Harvard their senior year — that they clapped when Larry Klein was named valedictorian instead of her.\u00a0 That bothered her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I could see why.\u00a0 Klein was smart, but not as smart as Wightman.<\/p>\n

I met Ann at the swamp when I picked up Alice.\u00a0 (I had been at my cousins’ in Jacksonville.)<\/p>\n

Ann was<\/strong><\/span> blas\u00e8.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t want to reminisce with me about high school.\u00a0 She said, \u201cI\u2019ve probably mentioned high school twice to my husband.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ann, what about about our Spanish teacher, Mrs. Worth?\u00a0 I knew Ann was a professor of Latin American history at Wesleyan University.\u00a0\u00a0 Ann wasn’t interested in recordando a<\/em> Mrs. Worth.<\/p>\n

Was high school that<\/em> bad, Ann?<\/p>\n

I haven’t<\/strong><\/span> seen Ann since.\u00a0 And she’s not coming to any high school reunions.<\/p>\n

It’s over.<\/p>\n

—<\/span><\/p>\n

Three days left to Jack Stratton’s Kickstarter<\/span> campaign.\u00a0 Something about synth and banjo.\u00a0 He needs a couple more backers.\u00a0 Check it out and contribute here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ann Wightman got all As and one B in high school.\u00a0 I think she purposefully got the B to let a boy be valedictorian.\u00a0 That\u2019s how it worked back then; some smart girls didn’t want to stick out academically. In 1991, my wife, Alice, called me from the Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia.\u00a0 She was on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6721"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24174,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6721\/revisions\/24174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}