In 1958 I was in third grade. On Wednesday afternoons our class had “Science Time.” At least, the boys had science time. They gathered on one side of the room to learn about things like chemistry – you could see smoke and smell their experimental concoctions from the other side of the room. Or they learned about astronomy and built scale models of the solar system and drew pictures of little green men with big heads. One day they even had an astronaut come and talk to them about space. 

Meanwhile on the other side of the classroom we girls had “Junior Home Ec” where we practiced sewing aprons and learned how to make chocolate chip cookies in a child’s “Betty Crocker” oven – which was pink, of course. We were taught not by a real teacher, but a teacher’s helper, usually a mother of one of the girls.  

I don’t think it was exactly forbidden for the girls to join the boys for Science Time, but it was definitely not encouraged. It was just accepted as the way it was – “Girls over here,” they called, and we went.  

I was puzzled that our teacher, Mrs. Scribner, taught Science Time, even though Mrs. Scribner was a woman. How had she learned enough science to teach it to the boys? Maybe she learned in secret, I thought. Or maybe she went to a special science school for girls. I thought about asking her if she would teach me too, in secret, so no one else would know that I was curious about science even though I was a girl.  I didn’t want anyone to know, but not because I was afraid people would think I was weird or unfeminine. No, I was afraid of looking stupid — I had already accepted that science would be too hard for me. After all, I was a girl. So I kept my mouth shut and made a crookedly-stitched apron that I forgot to hem, and gave it to my mother. 

This memory, which even today makes me furious, is one of the reasons I am so inordinately proud of my daughter – who is a scientist.