"A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, 'I can’t operate—that boy is my son!'"
I first heard that riddle in the 1970’s when I was in my twenties. I couldn’t for the life of me figure it out at first. When I read it to some of my sixth-grade classes during the 1980’s, nobody could solve it either, so I had to give them the answer. When I told it to a class of sixth graders sometime in the first decade of the 21st century, several hands shot up with the correct answer in a few seconds. It was no longer unheard of that a woman could be a surgeon. Views on gender equality had changed for many people, including my own. But as is the case with most significant changes, this required a process that took some time.
I attended Bennett Junior High School in Manchester CT during the 1960's. Back then, boys learned woodworking and electricity in shop classes. Girls learned sewing and cooking skills in home economics. I never stopped to wonder why our schedules were arranged this way. I also never heard a boy say he’d rather learn to bake brownies or a girl say she preferred to build a bookcase. At Manchester High School during this time, being on the cross country, track and swim teams were for boys only. Boys were told they had an innate ability in science, while girls were given the message they were more likely to succeed in reading poetry and writing prose. All that was as much a part of the world I grew up in as leaves turning color in fall and flowers growing in spring.
A few years after I graduated from Manchester High in 1967, I drove to the school track one autumn afternoon to get ready for Manchester’s Thanksgiving Day Road Race. As I got out of the car, I saw, to my surprise, a group of high school girls running wind sprints on the track. I was also surprised about a month later when a woman ran past me with long, powerful strides just before the Highland Street hill on the day of the road race. It now seems peculiar how much it startled me on those occasions when I saw how strongwomen runners are. However, this was still a time when many males, including me, had been led to believe that running more than a mile or so was a feat only we could participate in. Anything more than that had always been considered too strenuous for women. The world I had grown up in was beginning to change, but like many others, I hadn't caught up with it yet.
I caught up soon enough when I saw there were lots of women that I couldn’t keep up within road races. Since those at first humbling experiences, I've come to learn that everyone deserves the chance to follow their dreams whether they have a Y chromosome or not. It’s not a comfortable feeling to think there was once a time when I didn't grasp something as obvious as that. But then, I’ve been fortunate since those days. After I graduated, I began to receive an ongoing education from some very good teachers, starting with those girls sprinting around the track and the woman getting farther ahead of me with every step on Highland Street.
David James Madden