I know what you mean. Unfortunately, my genetic endowment sort of messed up along the way and now I am suffering for it every single day. My story is sort of sad and to this day, I feel extremely frustrated. My father has a PhD in Engineering from MIT, he worked extremely hard to get to where he is. He struggled along the way as the opportunities for success where not as abundant back then (1980s) as they are right now. Nonetheless, he persevered with a great deal of motivation and grit to get to where he is today. I guess everything was perfect...until he met my mother.

My mother grew up in another country and faced a great deal of stress and pressure as she was the oldest among 5 children. Her parents were not very supportive of her goals and endeavours and sent her away when she turned 18. She went from job to job and obtained a modest education from a university. Apparently she charmed my father's socks off and they were immediately married (it was an arranged marriage). Then I was born.

My parents hoped that I would follow in my father's footsteps. To succeed beyond the scope of his horizons and achieve much more. He dreamed of me becoming a doctor or an engineer and hoped that I would go to Harvard or another prestigious institution. However, as I was growing up I noticed that there was just something not right about me. I could not get along with my peers although I was very extroverted. School was another uphill battle. I could not understand numbers or abstract concepts for the life of me. My handwriting was very poor, I was disorganized, and would often drift off from the tasks at hand. Teachers called me out for not paying attention and following directions and I was constantly in the principal's office for interpersonal conflicts among my peers.

As I entered high school, I found myself extremely isolated from the rest of my peers. I didn't have any sort of talent nor was I brilliant by any means. My grades were horrendous despite consistent effort. Both my parents enrolled me in private tutoring, piano, saxophone, and guitar lessons, and even sports teams but I still could not catch on. Standardized tests were horrible and I just didn't get why despite coming from such a good pedigree from my father's side was I consistently failing. All of my other peers with similar backgrounds were on the fast track to success. In fact, one of my peers ended up getting a research paper published in a scientific journal. He went to Harvard for undergrad and was accepted into the MD/PhD program at the medical school. I didn't get what was wrong with me.

Only then I was formally diagnosed with ADHD. I was livid with my pediatrician because he saw the symptoms ever since I was a child and brushed them off. I called him out on that and he broke down and apologized for his lack of judgment. It didn't help that he was a family friend. I asked him why did this have to happen to me, did I do something wrong? And he said that it's purely genetic. It couldn't be my father and my doctor and I both agreed that it was my mother who passed on this horrible condition to me along with other undesirable traits.

To this day, I have a great deal of resentment towards her as I did not take after my father in any way. Maybe, I inherited physical aspects such as height and even weight. But I took everything else from my mother. In fact, I feel like I'm an exact replica of my mother as a guy though. When I was administered an IQ test, I scored in the average range and the discrepancies explained my struggle with mathematics and problems that required spatial ability. I took after my mother and I am so livid. Why did this happen to me? Wouldn't natural selection have favored my father's brilliance over my mother's traits? It's cruel and painful.

I always wonder what could have been done to prevent this. Even my father probably wishes that he didn't marry my mother. I wish they didn't meet and he could have ended up with someone better.

The moral of my story is: Looks can be deceiving. If you want smart children, marry a smart woman!