For most of my life, I saw myself as stupid. And I’m not the only one. Many people think I don’t know anything,  I hear from them often.

Thanks to my life in therapy, I learned much about the source of this feeling.

I had Dyslexia before teachers and parents had any idea what it was.

Because I couldn’t learn advanced grammar or, to this day, can’t do simple math or see the world as others do, my teachers concluded I wasn’t bright. My father agreed. I flunked tests, didn’t turn in homework, played hooky, and was held back.

I couldn’t do anything well in my early years in school and constantly failed, kept back, ridiculed, or criticized and humiliated. In all fairness, my mother never thought I was stupid. She said I was a born storyteller.

My wonderful grandmother spoke only  Yiddish – I needed it to be translated – and insisted that I was smarter than Einstein, her hero, and Jerry Lewis, her great love. (She didn’t know Einstein or Jerry Lewis and had never set foot in any of my classrooms. She just decided I was brilliant.)

Later in life, a therapist taught me that when people see someone as being stupid, the person labeled that way comes to believe it and even acts stupid deliberately to meet those labels and expectations.

It is what is expected of him and her. I believed it then and for much of my life.

Teachers scolded me publicly, and the bullies and tormenters echoed this in school yards and during recess. It didn’t help that all this criticism caused me to wet myself, sometimes in public and when I was called to speak.

My father thought I was stupid and told me so in many ways. He even told me my bedwetting was foolish and I should stop doing it.

I was drowning in a world of confusion, and I couldn’t see and do many things everyone else saw and did. What else could it be but stupidity?

I refused to admit my agony and shame or ask for help.

I dropped out of college because I couldn’t believe I could learn what was being taught. The only course I finished was one on handwriting analysis, which did me much good as a journalist.

I didn’t know about Dyslexia, and I guess I didn’t let anyone help me, including a sympathetic professor, a writer, who believed I had a lot of talent and tried to reach out to me. I ran away from him and quit school for good.

My first inclination that I might not be stupid was when I became a reporter and found that I had an almost psychic gift for getting people to talk to me and tell their stories. I could smell a story.

I never returned without the story I was sent to get, even when it sometimes made me ruthless and scheming.

I never learned the basic things kids are taught in school, but I didn’t need those things in my reporting career, which soared and was successful.

I began to doubt my stupidity, but I still couldn’t see the world as I was supposed to. I thought I was crafty, like a wolf, but not smart.

I kept the idea that I wasn’t as bright as others; I just had good animal instincts. I never learned all of those things that others know, and I still haven’t.

The Internet has helped me and contributed to my discovery that I wasn’t as dumb as I thought I was. I got this blog going, and it has been successful. I was told that would never be possible for me.

I realized I could never have done that if I were as stupid as I was told I was and thought I was.

And writing four New York Times bestsellers made me doubt my awful estimations of my intellect.  I heard rumors that my teachers were stunned.

I traveled the country talking about my books and learned I was a good and articulate speaker. I belong up front, telling my story. I began to understand myself better.

I believe I still project stupidity onto some people, judging from my e-mail.

This past winter, a woman wrote me to tell me we needed to feed the sheep and donkeys regularly or they would starve.

Some people  seem to think I’m dumb, and others are certain I don’t know anything and desperately need help and advice. That’s bees and honey to lots of social media people. Yes, I know, they mean well.

An Iowa farmer told me I should never beat a donkey with a stick, in case I didn’t know. I asked her why she thought I didn’t know that. She never answered.

Two weeks ago, I said I was conducting another seeding experiment this year, planting a few seeds in early April and chancing warm weather and sunlight.

I experiment with tarps and other covers and have successfully gotten an early start to summer.

(We put a tarp on yesterday and today. It will be warmer tomorrow.)

This unleashed a steady stream of concerned messages telling me that late May was the best time to plant seeds and bulbs for the summer, sending me links and websites advising people on how to plant seeds and reminding me that frost could kill young flowers.

Experimentation and innovation are not much respected on Facebook and other media platforms. Thoreau to be long gone. They would have skewered him on social media for the way he built his cottage.

I always wonder the same thing – if they think I don’t know that flowers could die in the cold, after all the fuss and writing I’ve done about my flower beds and all my pictures and the many people I’ve talked to about when to plant them and how to care for them.

My experiments have so far been good. We’re in a two-day cold snap, and my pansies will hold up. If not, I’ll plant others in May, as I intend to do. Some rules are just meant to be tested. I love doing that. Sometimes you just have to lose to learn.

My father is spinning in his grave – flowers instead of basketball. He had a sissy for a son.

Experiments are not admired on the Internet; like my teachers, people assume I don’t know anything.

I am sure they mean well and want to help; I am sure “just meaning to help” are words that chill my blood now.

I remember the day I began to understand that I wasn’t stupid (it should be clear that this became and remains a sensitive issue for me).

Maria and I were getting divorced, and I had fallen madly in love with her.

She was reticent and shy in those days and didn’t give any sign that she loved me back. She didn’t like men at all.

She was a Puritan about not being together until we were legally separated, and even then wanted to hide our relationship for a while.

After many agonizing months of fear and uncertainty – she was a genuine man-hater, and so was her monster dog Frieda, who wanted more than anything to tear me to pieces – I decided to let her know how I felt. I invited her to tea on the front porch and said I thought we had developed strong feelings for one another.

It was terrifying for me.

I was never more afraid and confident she would reject a dunderhead like me. I told her again how I felt one night in her studio; she was staring warily at me on a pink chair.

She listened to me, said nothing, and then left to feed the sheep. I went out to her car and left a note on her windshield. It read: “I’ll wait – no strings attached.” The paper vanished, and she said she had burned it; she told me she had eaten it.

I had no idea what she felt about it, but I was optimistic because she didn’t slap me or storm off—and determined to be patient. I did wait; I kept my promise.

When I told my shrink about it, she told me that this should make me understand once and for all that, I wasn’t stupid. It was, she said, a wise and brilliant plan, a great way to handle it.

I revisited Maria in her studio and, to my shock, talked dirty for a bit to make sure I wasn’t indifferent about sex. I still don’t know where the words came from.

Soon after, we were a couple, then husband and wife.

If I were foolish, that would never have happened.

She would have run away from me.

Around the same time, I was finally diagnosed with Dyslexia and understood that while I had many issues to contend with, I wasn’t stupid, or Maria would never have agreed to be with me or marry me.

I was proud of myself, and for the first time, I was genuinely proud of the way my mind worked.

That changed everything. I was jubilant.

That’s when I knew I wasn’t stupid.