Hidemi’s Rambling No.538

In the time of my school days, women in Japan were mostly housewives. It was considered that women quit working when they get married. One of my mother’s old female classmates stayed single and had an administrative job at IBM in Tokyo, which was so rare at that time. To me, continuing to work after marriage was more natural than being a housewife since my mother went to work every day. Only, I didn’t want to be like her who worked as a farmer in a country. I would rather have become a sophisticated businesswoman like her old classmate at IBM. It was necessary to graduate from the first-class university to be hired at a large famous company like IBM. I started to study for the university’s entrance examination when I was a freshman at high school. My daily life had inevitably changed. I had gradually distanced myself from my cool friends with whom I used to hang out all the time, and spent much time with my new would-be-a-doctor friend. She introduced me the whole new world. She was sincere, courteous and refined, and respected her parents who were both doctors. My study days were troublesome. Because I tended to listen to music instead of studying in my room at home, I studied at the library as much as possible. There, I spent the time solving math problems that I loved to do so much. Although Japan used to have a stupid system for the university entrance exam that the high average mark of all the seven subjects decided the school, I didn’t feel like studying other six subjects beside mathematics. I just studied math day and night, even floating a sheet of a problem in a plastic bag in the tub while I was taking a bath. I knew I needed to study other than math, but I didn’t realize my biggest weakness back then – I can’t do anything I don’t like. As the exam drew near, pressure had begun to seize me. I pulled out the plug of my stereo not to listen to records and stuck the plug to the wall with a note of ‘Patience!’ A small thing provoked my fury toward my sister with no reason one evening, and I found myself gripping her by the throat. I came to myself when I realized I was choking her. She told my father that I tried to kill her and he suggested to me that I should see a psychiatrist. Every practice examination showed I wouldn’t pass the university I was applying to, but I relied on my IQ heavily. I believed that if my brain ran at full blast on the very day of exam, my high IQ would wring out a high score by recalling what I didn’t even remember. Otherwise, it would be proved that my high IQ was a worthless, useless, decorative-only nothing although my whole life had depended on it. I couldn’t possibly accept that kind of notion. I refused, by any means…