Caitlin Clark news that came in too late for this story: She just set the records for 3-point baskets made in a single season, doing in 31 games what it took Steph Curry 36 games. She's 5 away from the career NCAA record which is held by a guy who played 5 seasons due to one COVID-shortened season. She's played 4 seasons, with one of them shortened from COVID.
She's a monster. She's so fun to watch, but what's really bringing tears to my eyes are all the moments when little girls jump up and down in the stands or when you see that Nike has come out with "You break it, you own it," shirts celebrating Clark busting ALL the fucking records. I mean, they probably do other special promotions for the guys they have NIL deals with and stuff, but seeing people wear those in the stands during the game she broke Pete Maravich's record was just tear-inducing for some reason.
There are lots of other women to love this year, but Clark done stole my heart.
Yeah, but it's a very short career, and it could be over tomorrow if an injury occurs. The men, even the really mediocre ones, start out at $1 million, whether they play or not.
Also, the women's national soccer team had to sue to get equal pay to the men's, when they're the only ones who have done anything. It's a major accomplishment when the men even win one World Cup game, and the women have won four World Cups and four Olympic golds. The men should have had to sue.
Of course you left out the part where the men take 2 years to qualify, playing 20-25 matches, the women play in a tourney that lasts about 2 weeks, almost always in the US, and qualify for both the Olympics and WC as a result.
I wonder if anyone on the WNT has ever had beer cans, batteries, bags of urine, etc thrown at them playing in El Salvador on a Tuesday night?
She's already got several deals. She was going to earn $3.5m next year whether she played in the NBA or stayed in college for her last year of eligibility.
TV and attendance numbers place the NBA and the WNBA in different worlds. But the world is changing. The WNBA is just 26 years old. The NBA is like 77 years old.
Yes, it makes me sick to my stomach that she's getting paid so little. I wonder if she was ineligible to be on a men's team? Muggsy Boags was short, and managed to do pretty well.
Maybe you should get over yourself? Overly sensitive men make me yawn. If you were a woman, you would have already wilted and died from the daily barrage of patriarchy and entitlement exhibited for us and against us by men. In fact, that is kind of what Crip Dyke is writing about. The "not all men" is inferred on Wonkette because otherwise you wouldn't be here, at least I thought so.
Diana Nyad is a queer woman whom lots of people still criticize, even regarding the fictionalized movie format. What do you mean by her having "crossed the barrier"?
I admire her greatly and would consider it an honor to lose to her. That said, I took Dorothea's remark along the lines of a quote from a movie, the title of which I'm blanking on: "a person is smart. People can be stupid." Probably butchered it.
"a boys team losing to a girls team (especially in the year end tourney), they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl." - Translation: "Sure, if a boy can't feel superior to a girl, it's only natural that he would resort to violence... we can't possibly expect boys to learn to accept defeat or exercise any self control in such a situation - we must use our institutional power to make sure they're never asked to do so."
On the up side, yay for lady sportsball! More of this! Sports is so woven into our social fabric - even for those who don't play/don't care - especially around gender - I think the sociology of this is relatively under-examined.
I became a fan. of college basketball when I moved to Connecticut in 1987. It took UConn's teams a few years to cohere and win championships, but watching them proved addictive long before they succeeded nationally.
The UConn women became a dynasty, a powerhouse, unbeatable for a record span. They benefited enormously from the competition of the Tennessee women's team, but few others came close. Now the women's game boasts dozens of great teams that have leveled up to match the play of those at the top.
That Caitlin Clark manages to dominate even within this greater parity testifies to her greatness. But she truly stands on the shoulders of giants--the very giants she will soon face in the WNBA, where she will hopefully bring her star power and ratings draw with her.
I live on the west coast, so I'm only a fan since Rizzotti/Lobo but that's still 30 years now, and I can spin plenty of tales straight from memory. UConn v Tenn the first year after Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and the rest graduated. Sophomore Taurasi is trying to drag a bunch of unprepared 1st years past the greatest team in history as the Vols were then under Pat Summitt. With the score tied at 26 (yes, I remember the exact score) Taurasi launches a 2/3rds-3/4 court end-of-half Hail Mary. It swishes through.
Why is that important? Because the Huskies were down 3 at the end of regulation. Fortunately another 3 -- this one from less than half court -- was in the air and would be good if it went. It went.
The Huskies won in OT as part of an incredible string of victories under Taurasi, but if she had missed that 70 footer as the first half ended, then they never would have had the chance to take it to OT, being down 6 instead of 3.
She made 4 miracle 3s that day, and the Huskies needed every single one of them. Taurasi is and will always be a basketball god. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Abrosimova and Stewie and so, so many players I haven't named here, but Taurasi was just stupefyingly great.
Ta, Crip Dyke. This is the first I'm hearing about SWOB keeping the girls (and their girl cooties) from competing against the boys. It's infuriating.
Way back in the Stone Age when I was in junior high and high school, I was a 5'0" holy terror on the basketball court, and we had to play by GIRLS RULES. What were they? Three dribbles and one had to pass, and we played half court, not full court. What that translated to was that I had to play forward. My aim was deadly; I aced gym because of my basketball ability. I could and did get the ball to the basket from anywhere. Every class I was in, every year I played, we won the intramurals.
That these girls are kept from competing shows the entrenchment of the patriarchy. It. Must. Not. Stand.
What are we teaching our boys? Why are they being taught they are inherently superior to girls? Why are they being taught that girls are solely responsible for the behavior of boys? Why are they being taught violence is an acceptable way to retaliate against girls? Why are they being taught that it is shameful to lose to a girl? What are we teaching our boys?
Mapes Jr had just turned six when she was first called a gendered slur. The neighbor kids had learned that when they didn’t like what a girl said or did, they should shut her down by calling her a bitch.
After we addressed the situation with their mother, I came home and cried angry, bitter tears. Mr. Mapes didn’t understand my anger until I gave him an idea of all the talks we would have with Jr that his parents never had with him. How to walk to your car at night. How to keep your drink covered. How to never, ever go home with someone without telling at least one friend.
Just going to do a quick shout out to Wilma Rudolph. She was Blackand grew up in a segregated town in Tennessee. She had polio as a child, and walked with braces for years.
She won 3 gold medals in track at the Rome Olympics. GOAT.
Crip, you didn't mention that in Iowa, as recently as the mid to late 80's girls HS basketball was played 6 vs 6, or more accurately two games of 3 on 3. So you had games where a player might score 50-60 without batting an eye.
"Doing this for 28 years, what we have worried about is a boys team losing to a girls team (especially in the year end tourney), they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl. Then we have liability issues.”
As a father of a six grade son who plays in a basketball league, this statement not only is disingenuous it’s also insulting to the boys. Don’t they teach sportsmanship in their league. I can’t imagine that the boys in my sons league would ever attack a girl for beating them in a game or a boy for that matter. The SWOB is insulting the boys, the girls and Ohio sports with this bullshit.
And if it’s a racial thing where the girls team is black and the boys team is white then twice as much shame on them for their antiquated nonsense.
You made a mistake, you didn’t refer to it as “sportsball” in Wonkette’s typical mocking cadence of…. I guess every mainstream American in the hundreds of millions, who watches sports? Don’t know why they go outta their way to sound elitist on that one. Kinda baffling.
Nevertheless! Caitlin Clark's phenomenal, I love her to death.
As someone who finds sports incredibly tedious, I appreciate the irreverence of ‘sportsball.’ There aren’t a lot of spaces for those of us who are just perplexed by the obsession with watching other people chase balls around. YMMV.
I am not a sports person. I don't play them, don't watch them, don't like them. I suppose I still have a bit of mild hostility left over from gym classes as a kid, but mostly I'm just as indifferent as it is possible to be.
But I'm also a person who lives in this culture, so I've been hearing, all my life, that sports build character. Teach sportsmanship, teach teamwork. Good clean fun, keeps kids out of trouble. Teach how to compete hard but fair, take your knocks. Teach how to lose, and keep getting back up.
So what I took from that astonishing statement from Southwestern Ohio Basketball is that sports either do not in fact do any of those things, or that Southwestern Ohio Basketball is very very bad at their job of teaching those life lessons to kids that we keep hearing about.
I think sports are fun to watch. I also am leery of fan loyalty to teams which seems to encourage tribalism. For example, when Giants fans say they hate the Dodgers and start chanting insults etc it becomes an exercise othering, which puts me off.
For so many people, the fandom doesn't seem to have any connection with the quality of the team. I mean, I can understand being a fan of something that you think is great - the young woman described in this article sounds like she is amazingly talented, so it makes sense to me that she would have fans.
But for a lot of people, sports fandom does not seem to work that way. They're not fans because they think the team is a very good team that they like to watch, but instead it's some kind of tribal thing based on where they live. Just one more thing about sports that I don't get, I guess.
One summer I coached a coed basketball team in our town rec league for 11-12 year olds. During the winter I coached girls teams. All the other coaches coached boys teams in the winter. When we were picking our 10 person roster I ended up with 2 good boys. One boy that was the best was left in the last round but he was not good. I also 7 very good girls because the other coaches didn’t draft girls until they had to because …. ewww, cooties or something.
We went out to warm up for the first game. The boys on the other team were pointing and laughing at my team because they were going to play against girls! The girls got mad. The 2 good boys were looking for a place to hide because they were sure they were going to get beat badly.
In retrospect laughing at my girls was not the sharpest thing they could have done. We scored 3 times as many points as the other team. The other team looked a little shell shocked after the game. The next week I found out the boys on the losing team were made fun of by their friends for losing to girls. Then we did the exact same thing the next week to another boy heavy team. No one was laughing at us after that.
Every team we played brought their A game but it didn’t help most of them. We ended up losing one game in triple OT. It was quite possibly the most physical game I ever saw played at that level. The girl that played center for me and the boy on the other side were brutal. I was amazed they both left the court with all their teeth intact.
Not letting the girls play against the boys is just stupid. It takes away from the girls, obviously but it also harms the boys. They aren’t going to get violent. They are going to play the best they can so they can win. You know, a competition .
Non-sportsball related, but kind of on topic. I still remember the time when my HS social sciences teacher - a dude who also was head coach for the boys’ wrestling team - decided to opine in class that “boys don’t want to date girls who are smarter than they are,” and specifically name-checked your 2Cats as an example.
I was always the smartest kid in my class. That’s not a flex - I went to a rural consolidated school district in the Midwest, with only 52 students in my graduating class. And it wasn’t something I tried to draw attention to. But from the moment I entered kindergarten and was sent up a grade level for certain classes (because I could already read books), to being given “independent study” on topics of my choosing because I already knew the material being covered in JH classes, to being HS valedictorian and nailing standardized tests, everybody knew I was the smartest kid in class. Like I said, it was a small school, so it was rather obvious.
Even though it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, I remember being terribly embarrassed by my teacher for calling out why male classmates wouldn’t want to date ME specifically. I think he actually meant for it to sound like a criticism of HS guys; it just didn’t come across that way at the time.
Anyway, I guess that’s why I only dated college guys when I was in HS. 😂
Caitlin Clark news that came in too late for this story: She just set the records for 3-point baskets made in a single season, doing in 31 games what it took Steph Curry 36 games. She's 5 away from the career NCAA record which is held by a guy who played 5 seasons due to one COVID-shortened season. She's played 4 seasons, with one of them shortened from COVID.
She's a monster. She's so fun to watch, but what's really bringing tears to my eyes are all the moments when little girls jump up and down in the stands or when you see that Nike has come out with "You break it, you own it," shirts celebrating Clark busting ALL the fucking records. I mean, they probably do other special promotions for the guys they have NIL deals with and stuff, but seeing people wear those in the stands during the game she broke Pete Maravich's record was just tear-inducing for some reason.
There are lots of other women to love this year, but Clark done stole my heart.
She also surpassed Pistol Pete as the all time college scoring champ.
I put that in the article. Did Trix edit it out?
Hey, that's a really nice addendum.
Our hoops backstop:
https://substack.com/profile/192348633-morganx/note/c-51296417?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=36ip5l
So beautiful!
Love it!
Caitlin Clark is going pro...and making $78,000 per year. I'm guessing the guy who washes the team's socks in men's basketball makes that much money.
For a first job with a BA/BS degree, that's not bad!
Yeah, but it's a very short career, and it could be over tomorrow if an injury occurs. The men, even the really mediocre ones, start out at $1 million, whether they play or not.
I was making a joke about "student athletes" and the vanishing promises of what a college education provides as far as economic mobility goes.
She deserves far more, obviously, and I think we all agree on that!
That wooshing sound was the noise of the joke going over my head!
Would an NBA team draft her?
I wondered about that, too.
NO. Sorry, don't feel like expanding on this at the moment, but definitely not. BBall is my game, so it hurts.
Also, the women's national soccer team had to sue to get equal pay to the men's, when they're the only ones who have done anything. It's a major accomplishment when the men even win one World Cup game, and the women have won four World Cups and four Olympic golds. The men should have had to sue.
Of course you left out the part where the men take 2 years to qualify, playing 20-25 matches, the women play in a tourney that lasts about 2 weeks, almost always in the US, and qualify for both the Olympics and WC as a result.
I wonder if anyone on the WNT has ever had beer cans, batteries, bags of urine, etc thrown at them playing in El Salvador on a Tuesday night?
Exactly!
Yeah, but he's not going to be doing endorsements, like your face on a cereal box, which I imagine is the real money is.
Not to suggest that there's anything remotely equitable about these types of arrangements.
She's getting ridiculously underpaid, even if she does do endorsements. Her best hope is to get Nike to give her a deal.
She's already got several deals. She was going to earn $3.5m next year whether she played in the NBA or stayed in college for her last year of eligibility.
Thank goodness! Being that good at something, and only making $78,000 a year is criminal.
Yay!
The minimum NBA salary is more than $1.1 million. And that's for a guy who sits the bench most of the time.
TV and attendance numbers place the NBA and the WNBA in different worlds. But the world is changing. The WNBA is just 26 years old. The NBA is like 77 years old.
Excellent point, and one iterated in the WNBA 25th year anniversary, as I should credit to be fair.
Yes, it makes me sick to my stomach that she's getting paid so little. I wonder if she was ineligible to be on a men's team? Muggsy Boags was short, and managed to do pretty well.
It would never be allowed, even without the NBA.
Well actually (womansplaining), Lusia Harris was drafted in the NBA in 1977 but never played, and other attempts fell through or were vexed (hexed?).
It reminds me of Megan Rapinoe. She's a fucking hero to girls. Men can't stand it. She makes their bitty balls even bittier.
I’m a guy. Megan Rapinoe is a hero to me.
My reference was only about men with bitty balls :D
Maybe that is what you should have said? In the interest of clarity?
Maybe you should get over yourself? Overly sensitive men make me yawn. If you were a woman, you would have already wilted and died from the daily barrage of patriarchy and entitlement exhibited for us and against us by men. In fact, that is kind of what Crip Dyke is writing about. The "not all men" is inferred on Wonkette because otherwise you wouldn't be here, at least I thought so.
this. exactly. and these sexist dunces are letting the world know all about it.
I know/know of SO MANY men, like HusbX, who adore and admire the hell out of her, though. Like Diana Nyad, she's crossed the barrier.
Diana Nyad is a queer woman whom lots of people still criticize, even regarding the fictionalized movie format. What do you mean by her having "crossed the barrier"?
I admire her greatly and would consider it an honor to lose to her. That said, I took Dorothea's remark along the lines of a quote from a movie, the title of which I'm blanking on: "a person is smart. People can be stupid." Probably butchered it.
Men in Black. Tommy Lee Jones delivered the line.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
The Fugitive
Same actor.
The Votes for Women song from Mary Poppins?
“Though we adore men individually
As a group we agree they’re rather stupid”
Ha, you've got it! And of course, she's on the money with her non-comment!
I love it when you pipe up like this! It's like a clean, trim, modern clarion call.
"a boys team losing to a girls team (especially in the year end tourney), they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl." - Translation: "Sure, if a boy can't feel superior to a girl, it's only natural that he would resort to violence... we can't possibly expect boys to learn to accept defeat or exercise any self control in such a situation - we must use our institutional power to make sure they're never asked to do so."
On the up side, yay for lady sportsball! More of this! Sports is so woven into our social fabric - even for those who don't play/don't care - especially around gender - I think the sociology of this is relatively under-examined.
I became a fan. of college basketball when I moved to Connecticut in 1987. It took UConn's teams a few years to cohere and win championships, but watching them proved addictive long before they succeeded nationally.
The UConn women became a dynasty, a powerhouse, unbeatable for a record span. They benefited enormously from the competition of the Tennessee women's team, but few others came close. Now the women's game boasts dozens of great teams that have leveled up to match the play of those at the top.
That Caitlin Clark manages to dominate even within this greater parity testifies to her greatness. But she truly stands on the shoulders of giants--the very giants she will soon face in the WNBA, where she will hopefully bring her star power and ratings draw with her.
I live on the west coast, so I'm only a fan since Rizzotti/Lobo but that's still 30 years now, and I can spin plenty of tales straight from memory. UConn v Tenn the first year after Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and the rest graduated. Sophomore Taurasi is trying to drag a bunch of unprepared 1st years past the greatest team in history as the Vols were then under Pat Summitt. With the score tied at 26 (yes, I remember the exact score) Taurasi launches a 2/3rds-3/4 court end-of-half Hail Mary. It swishes through.
Why is that important? Because the Huskies were down 3 at the end of regulation. Fortunately another 3 -- this one from less than half court -- was in the air and would be good if it went. It went.
The Huskies won in OT as part of an incredible string of victories under Taurasi, but if she had missed that 70 footer as the first half ended, then they never would have had the chance to take it to OT, being down 6 instead of 3.
She made 4 miracle 3s that day, and the Huskies needed every single one of them. Taurasi is and will always be a basketball god. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Abrosimova and Stewie and so, so many players I haven't named here, but Taurasi was just stupefyingly great.
We have a pretty good basketball player here in my town, too:
https://www.today.com/parents/family/caitlin-clark-record-grace-beyer-rcna142201
That SWOB decision has me in a rage.
Ta, Crip Dyke. This is the first I'm hearing about SWOB keeping the girls (and their girl cooties) from competing against the boys. It's infuriating.
Way back in the Stone Age when I was in junior high and high school, I was a 5'0" holy terror on the basketball court, and we had to play by GIRLS RULES. What were they? Three dribbles and one had to pass, and we played half court, not full court. What that translated to was that I had to play forward. My aim was deadly; I aced gym because of my basketball ability. I could and did get the ball to the basket from anywhere. Every class I was in, every year I played, we won the intramurals.
That these girls are kept from competing shows the entrenchment of the patriarchy. It. Must. Not. Stand.
What a great story, Zyx. It's the boys that need to be protected, if you ask me.
If you have any old photos of you playing from those days, I think people here would love to see one.
What are we teaching our boys? Why are they being taught they are inherently superior to girls? Why are they being taught that girls are solely responsible for the behavior of boys? Why are they being taught violence is an acceptable way to retaliate against girls? Why are they being taught that it is shameful to lose to a girl? What are we teaching our boys?
Mapes Jr had just turned six when she was first called a gendered slur. The neighbor kids had learned that when they didn’t like what a girl said or did, they should shut her down by calling her a bitch.
After we addressed the situation with their mother, I came home and cried angry, bitter tears. Mr. Mapes didn’t understand my anger until I gave him an idea of all the talks we would have with Jr that his parents never had with him. How to walk to your car at night. How to keep your drink covered. How to never, ever go home with someone without telling at least one friend.
What are we teaching our boys?
Exactly. The referenced quote smelled very much like a "now look at what you made me do" mood.
Just going to do a quick shout out to Wilma Rudolph. She was Blackand grew up in a segregated town in Tennessee. She had polio as a child, and walked with braces for years.
She won 3 gold medals in track at the Rome Olympics. GOAT.
Crip, you didn't mention that in Iowa, as recently as the mid to late 80's girls HS basketball was played 6 vs 6, or more accurately two games of 3 on 3. So you had games where a player might score 50-60 without batting an eye.
And they packed out gyms to watch this.
There are very few basketball players that I have watched just to see what they might do in a given moment.
The first was Michael Jordan, then Curry and now Clark.
"Doing this for 28 years, what we have worried about is a boys team losing to a girls team (especially in the year end tourney), they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl. Then we have liability issues.”
As a father of a six grade son who plays in a basketball league, this statement not only is disingenuous it’s also insulting to the boys. Don’t they teach sportsmanship in their league. I can’t imagine that the boys in my sons league would ever attack a girl for beating them in a game or a boy for that matter. The SWOB is insulting the boys, the girls and Ohio sports with this bullshit.
And if it’s a racial thing where the girls team is black and the boys team is white then twice as much shame on them for their antiquated nonsense.
They may as well have come out and said that we don't want boys to lose to girls.
Because that is what they said with that shit.
You made a mistake, you didn’t refer to it as “sportsball” in Wonkette’s typical mocking cadence of…. I guess every mainstream American in the hundreds of millions, who watches sports? Don’t know why they go outta their way to sound elitist on that one. Kinda baffling.
Nevertheless! Caitlin Clark's phenomenal, I love her to death.
Totally elitist to say sportsball
As someone who finds sports incredibly tedious, I appreciate the irreverence of ‘sportsball.’ There aren’t a lot of spaces for those of us who are just perplexed by the obsession with watching other people chase balls around. YMMV.
I am not a sports person. I don't play them, don't watch them, don't like them. I suppose I still have a bit of mild hostility left over from gym classes as a kid, but mostly I'm just as indifferent as it is possible to be.
But I'm also a person who lives in this culture, so I've been hearing, all my life, that sports build character. Teach sportsmanship, teach teamwork. Good clean fun, keeps kids out of trouble. Teach how to compete hard but fair, take your knocks. Teach how to lose, and keep getting back up.
So what I took from that astonishing statement from Southwestern Ohio Basketball is that sports either do not in fact do any of those things, or that Southwestern Ohio Basketball is very very bad at their job of teaching those life lessons to kids that we keep hearing about.
I think sports are fun to watch. I also am leery of fan loyalty to teams which seems to encourage tribalism. For example, when Giants fans say they hate the Dodgers and start chanting insults etc it becomes an exercise othering, which puts me off.
For so many people, the fandom doesn't seem to have any connection with the quality of the team. I mean, I can understand being a fan of something that you think is great - the young woman described in this article sounds like she is amazingly talented, so it makes sense to me that she would have fans.
But for a lot of people, sports fandom does not seem to work that way. They're not fans because they think the team is a very good team that they like to watch, but instead it's some kind of tribal thing based on where they live. Just one more thing about sports that I don't get, I guess.
I think I didn't properly articulate earlier how badly needed and much appreciated is your work on this topic. Many thanks!
One summer I coached a coed basketball team in our town rec league for 11-12 year olds. During the winter I coached girls teams. All the other coaches coached boys teams in the winter. When we were picking our 10 person roster I ended up with 2 good boys. One boy that was the best was left in the last round but he was not good. I also 7 very good girls because the other coaches didn’t draft girls until they had to because …. ewww, cooties or something.
We went out to warm up for the first game. The boys on the other team were pointing and laughing at my team because they were going to play against girls! The girls got mad. The 2 good boys were looking for a place to hide because they were sure they were going to get beat badly.
In retrospect laughing at my girls was not the sharpest thing they could have done. We scored 3 times as many points as the other team. The other team looked a little shell shocked after the game. The next week I found out the boys on the losing team were made fun of by their friends for losing to girls. Then we did the exact same thing the next week to another boy heavy team. No one was laughing at us after that.
Every team we played brought their A game but it didn’t help most of them. We ended up losing one game in triple OT. It was quite possibly the most physical game I ever saw played at that level. The girl that played center for me and the boy on the other side were brutal. I was amazed they both left the court with all their teeth intact.
Not letting the girls play against the boys is just stupid. It takes away from the girls, obviously but it also harms the boys. They aren’t going to get violent. They are going to play the best they can so they can win. You know, a competition .
Non-sportsball related, but kind of on topic. I still remember the time when my HS social sciences teacher - a dude who also was head coach for the boys’ wrestling team - decided to opine in class that “boys don’t want to date girls who are smarter than they are,” and specifically name-checked your 2Cats as an example.
I was always the smartest kid in my class. That’s not a flex - I went to a rural consolidated school district in the Midwest, with only 52 students in my graduating class. And it wasn’t something I tried to draw attention to. But from the moment I entered kindergarten and was sent up a grade level for certain classes (because I could already read books), to being given “independent study” on topics of my choosing because I already knew the material being covered in JH classes, to being HS valedictorian and nailing standardized tests, everybody knew I was the smartest kid in class. Like I said, it was a small school, so it was rather obvious.
Even though it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, I remember being terribly embarrassed by my teacher for calling out why male classmates wouldn’t want to date ME specifically. I think he actually meant for it to sound like a criticism of HS guys; it just didn’t come across that way at the time.
Anyway, I guess that’s why I only dated college guys when I was in HS. 😂