Throughout high school, I used to carry around stacks of books and scientific papers with me. My father had warned me not to bring them into the house because he did not want to see them, but of course I would just hide them in my room or disguise them by putting an acceptable book on top or in front of them. I thought that the whole charade was rather quite funny. I had friends who hid pornography or alcohol or music with illicit lyrics from their parents, and I even knew of people who stashed drugs; my classmates stayed out late to attend parties or meet with lovers. And here I was, having to conceal scientific papers and sneaking out to go to the university library! But I was caught several times, and punished with varying degrees of severity.
The one incident which finally made it impossible to study at my parents’ house was actually rather mild. I had placed a stack of books and papers on the table in the living room, and was sitting on the couch reading one of the papers. I don’t remember whether my father had come back from work early, or if I had been so engrossed that I had lost track of time. Either way, he walked into the room and found me with a pile of books on science.
He picked up the book on the top of the pile, which happened to be Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. I had actually read the book before, but I was re-reading it because my physics teacher had become interested in it and wanted to ask me questions about it. So I had a legitimate “school-related” excuse for having it; but I suppose that since I wouldn’t be graded on my extracurricular discussions with my teacher, my parents would still have considered it a “waste of time” anyway. My father made an expression, which I suppose could be called a grimace, when he saw the cover. (The cover of the book showed Hawking in a pose that I have heard called “unflattering”, but it was by no means disgusting.) He asked, “What is this?” The conversation went roughly as follows:
“It’s a book on physics.”
“It doesn’t look like a book on physics.”
“It is a book on physics. That’s Stephen Hawking.”
“Who’s Stephen Hawking?”
“He’s a famous scientist.”
“I have never heard of him.”
“He’s really famous.”
The next thing he said is seared into my memory. It was so incredible that I wrote it down because I wanted to have a record that he had actually said it. He raised his voice almost to a scream, and said, in English, verbatim:
“HE MAY HAVE HEARD OF ME. BUT I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF HIM.”
And when I heard that, I just picked everything up to leave. He yelled after me, “I forbid you to read those books ever again!”, and various other things.
I had never spoken with anyone who had never heard of Stephen Hawking. Of course, I must have met many such people, but my relationships with them were of a nature such that Stephen Hawking’s name would never have come up in conversation. But many of my classmates knew who he was, even the ones who did not usually pay too much attention to science, because he was something of a celebrity (for example, he had recently made a guest appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation, as a holographic version of himself; and at the time his book was in the news for breaking all sorts of sales records). Even the employees at the large retail chain bookstores, who usually had no clue about the products they were selling, were able to converse to some degree about his theories. In fact, his name had entered the slang lexicon of my peers to mean something like “being in possession of an understanding that one is unable to articulate”. For example, if someone was trying to explain the solution to a homework problem but was unable to impart his understanding of it in words, he’d say, “God, I feel like such a Stephen Hawking.” This was probably unfair to Hawking, who seemed to remain quite articulate in spite of his disabilities.
So that was the “reason” my father gave me for forbidding me from reading anything by Stephen Hawking: because he had “never heard of him”. How does one even begin to negotiate with someone so unreasonable? At that point, I simply gave up any hope of getting any work done in my parents’ house, and began to spend more and more time outside.
– davinci
I think that your Father was jealous – jealous that you admired Stephen Hawking and probably thought that you, his son, should admire him instead. Plain jealously, selfishness, and inability to appreciate and value the accomplishments of others, including his own son. The traits of authoritarian parents are the same as narcissistic personality disorder – self-centered, the world revolves around them.
I’m sorry you went through such a terrible childhood experience – but, thankfully you’re extremely bright and you have your whole life ahead of you, and you can make a good life for yourself still.
Thanks, Gina.
– davinci
Don’t give up! Now that you’re free from your parents’ ignorant ways, you can finally do whatever you want! I say, go back to academia (if you haven’t already) and show the world who you are!
Sorry for this sudden appearance in your blog. I just happened to read through your whole autobiography, and I was especially shocked by your parents’ attitude towards having a son who wanted to be a scientist, and it just made me real angry and sad at the same time.