When my cousin and I were small, we spent hours arguing with our Sunday school teacher. She kept insisting men were stronger than women, and for the life of Irene and myself, we could just not accept this. On principle alone. Though we knew what she meant, she did not phrase it to our liking, so we fought tooth and nail. “No, men are not stronger than women. Women can do...” And so it went. We made sure to articulate, at every provocation, all the ways that women were the stronger sex.

We were 16, and it was to be our last year in Sunday school. We exasperated the poor woman, and to this day, I do not know where she found the patience to tolerate us, to not send us to hell.

As life should have it, years later I was in her position. I became the teacher. Whom would I call upon to do selected tasks? Hmm...choices to make. Would I call the male or female students to carry the heavy viewing equipment, boxes of books and the like? I, not surprisingly at all by that point, picked the males—to the dismay of the girls in the class. I found myself explaining, “See, girls, women are smart, kind, have strong minds, BUT, male muscles are bigger. That is why I ask them to carry the heavier stuff. C’est la vie, just accept it,” I said till they knew it by rote.

Time passed and by the end of the year they no longer asked to carry the heavy materials. “Come on...guys...girls...anyone? Anyone to help...?” The boys were busy, and the girls were no longer interested in proving their equality.

That day, I carried the end of year load by myself, with every ounce of Sunday school strength I had preserved. Selective muscle and my brain willed the body that day, over and over. There was no time to remember limitations.