When I was a little boy, I thought both of my parents were brilliant. Does everyone assume that of his own parents? Or was that just me?
Both of my parents had college degrees and both had started their careers as teachers. (Mother spent her entire career teaching.) They both seemed to know everything — at least compared to me — so I guess I thought they had been good students, especially because they expected me to do well at everything in school.
I figured out a long time ago that my mother had been both more creative and more academically gifted than he was. My father wasn’t stupid — and his head was actually stuffed with an impressive array of facts — but he wasn’t brilliant.
As I went through some of his remaining things to throw away today, I came across his college transcript — and I was shocked. He was a terrible student, far worse than I had imagined.

We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
Even when folks praise my work, my secret fear is I may be a fraud
U.S. gives $529 million to build car with worse gas mileage than SUV
Storms can end without warning, bringing hope of blue skies ahead
No matter where I might ever live, the South will always be my home
Problem for schools: ‘stop students from becoming this advanced’
Only certainty of life is that every one of us crosses River Styx alone