He Told Me I Was Ignorant

Just thinking about things from the past, as oldies are prone to do..and recalling some really quite nasty things my ex said to me.  What he proved by saying them was that he didn't know me at all.  The strange thing is that after 30 years of his being an 'ex'  he still has the same attitude towards me. Makes you wonder why he ever married me in the first place.  I mean, if you think someone is 'ignorant' and 'coarse' and 'common' and uneducated - why in hell would you marry them?  Perhaps he had to get married to keep up with his 'friends' - which is extremely odd, as we never saw them and he didn't keep in touch with them.  The whole TWO of them.

The one thing that sticks and now makes me want to ram it down his ugly throat is the contempt he felt for me, because I didn't have the education he had.  Bearing in mind that he was an only child, whereas I was one of three, and his mother got a full-time job to pay for his education it is not exactly surprising.  He repaid her when he went to college, by pissing away his first year drinking and doing things you would expect from a 10 year old kid.  And then failing his examinations.  Which shows the sense of entitlement he had, and still has.

Any road, as they say.  He was talking about his job one evening, when we had been married a couple of years.  I said that it was something I think I would love to do, especially as he was in the Merchant Navy and travelled all over the world.  His reply floored me.  He said (I quote, as I remember this vividly)  "Oh you couldn't do my job.  How do I put this nicely?  Um, you just don't have the education!"...................what a huge soul he has eh?  What he did forget to factor into his supercilious equation was that, although I had left school at age 15 I had never stopped learning.  I had attended night school.  I had read widely and voraciously.  And every subject I came across I would learn learn learn about.

 
Now that we are 30 years older, I believe I have 30 years more of learning under my belt.  He doesn't.  He doesn't even read.  He has no idea that I had even done the first year of Open University, and flew through it!  Sadly, my demanding job put the mockers on finishing.  It proved something to me though - that even though I had the minimum of formal education I could think, and learn, and had tucked more knowledge in my handbag than he had in his suitcase.  Arrogant pig.

Just because you are an autodidact (self-taught!) this does not mean you are ignorant or uneducated.  Lack of formal qualifications does not mean you don't have wide knowledge and experience.  And most importantly, just because a pompous, stuck-up Pommie prig says you are dim does NOT mean that you are.   I believe what it actually means is that he knows you are probably 10 times smarter than he is - and that he didn't know that you had a Mensa score IQ.  Ha!  Wonder if he STILL feels threatened by me?
 
Wouldn't that be a kicker!