I grew up in a household that read all the time, talked about the world as we thought it exists and imagined possible worlds, and had conversations all the time about anything that interested us. I had my first computer at age 8, and had the freedom to use it as I pleased, which turns out involved programming it. My world was rich with numbers. My toys were mostly things that I could build things with. My house had a hallway full of many thousands of books, and so I never ran out of something to read.

When you say that I’m smart, I beg to differ; I come from privilege. Or if you insist on wanting to continue using the word smart, we should redefine it not to mean an inherent fixed trait that someone has and possibly inherited from their parents, and think of it as a trait that is developed by immersion in rich experiences.