I was in kindergarten, and we were on a field trip to the zoo. A kid in my class asked the teacher “Can we feed the monkeys?” as he was standing directly in front of a sign, eye level to a kindergartener, that said DO NOT FEED THE MONKEYS. I said to him, “The sign right there says do not feed the monkeys! Can’t you read?” Then I remembered that he probably couldn’t read, and realized I had embarassed him. I was so mortified that I decided then and there to fail spectacularly at every academic endeavor that presented itself over the next twenty-five years.
In second grade, when I was sent to read to the principal from 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea, full version. I think they wanted to see if I actually understood what I was reading. I guess they figured out I did, since the next year they gave me the hardest little pamphlet from the reading set, and then let me read what I wanted to after then. However, I’m not sure I ever figured out that reading 400 page books in second grade was odd until fairly recently.
I can’t say specifically, but, I guess when I first entered school. For as long as I can remember, I generally finished assignments/tests/etc before anyone else, and hardly ever made mistakes. I got praised on my unique insights and sort of obviously drew better than the other kids. I had perfect pitch and memorized lines faster than kids in my group piano/singing lessons and such. No one ever tested to see if I was a genius or skipped me a grade, but if there was an honors/advanced/gifted designation for something I was in it. I was periodically dubbed the smart one/the bookworm/etc. I wasn’t hated, though - maybe because I spent a lot of time thinking about the other kids perceived me (that being seen as bragging or condescending to others would make me an asshole, and things like that).
Fat lot of good it’s doing me now, though.
This is a thread I’d like to see…
Preach it. I often ask myself, “If I’m so smart, why can’t I get a decent job?”
It was weird, I never really thought about it when I was very young. I entered kindergarten already reading fluently, but nobody noticed because back then you didn’t do any book work in kindergarten. In first grade the shit hit the fan, though, because my secret became known and, unbeknownst to me, the teachers gave my mother a ton of grief for having taught me to read too early, and probably “the wrong way,” according to the educational experts of the time. Poor mom, all she had done was to read books to my sister and me since we could sit up, and I got the idea and went with it. I don’t remember NOT being able to read.
So I had to sit there, horribly bored, waiting for the others to catch up. Mom tried to help out by keeping me home a few days a week, but that only made it worse because what I did while home was to continue reading, getting even farther ahead of the others. I thought nothing of all of this, being kind of an idiot in things other than reading.
Finally, after Christmas vacation when I went back to school, the first grade teacher told me (oh, so tactful, that one) that I didn’t belong in her class any more and that I was supposed to go to the second grade class down the hall.
Well, I was not quite as far ahead of the second graders in reading, so that was better. Unfortunately, the second graders had already gotten well into their arithmetic lessons, and I had barely learned simple adding and subtracting (and to count change, so I would be allowed to play Monopoly with my older sister). There was not any kind of transition or help into the situation, so I kind of bungled along feeling like I was really, really stupid for not knowing what all the others seemed to know.
Third grade, things got better. There was another advanced child, a boy who had also skipped a grade, in the same class, and the teacher actually liked the idea and the challenge of teaching gifted children and she would give us advanced work to do. Unfortunately, both of us were very dorky compared to the others, and not at all good at sports, which as everyone knows is the really important thing. So we dealt with being picked-upon outcasts.
So to finally answer the question, I knew from about the age of 6 onward that I was different. College was great as far as academic challenge, but it wasn’t until I was an adult and took the Mensa test at my dad’s suggestion, that I found out I was in the top 2 %. I later joined and felt like I had finally come home.
As an interesting epilogue, decades later at a class reunion I met one of the girls who had tormented me back in elementary and junior high school. I confessed that I had always envied her because she was so extraordinarily good at sports. “ME?” she exclaimed. "YOU were jealous of ME? I was jealous of you because you could read and I couldn’t. "
Not really ever. I’ve tested out at a high level, but nearly all my life I’ve been around intellectual peers. Sort of like how Garrison Keillor says…“where all the kids are above average”. My verbal skills were good early on and I read early, but I always had trouble with math, at which I am now much better but still nowhere near the point where I should consider going back to college for a degree in physics.
Mostly, I realized it when I was called a “four-eyed geek” and got pushed around 
That is beautiful. I can see it too. Wayyyy in the distance. I hunger to taste sweet genius, but I have accepted that I shall never even get close to the table. Still, I keep snatchin’ crumbs from the Greater Minds, whenever I can!
I’ve never felt especially smart, I just think most people are really stupid.
I was reading pre-K so I guess I got the first inklings in the first grade when I realized some kids were struggling with the reading material. I was into Poe before the fourth grade. However, I never did well with arithmetic and I still have to visualize counters to do simple math. Algebra and calculus came much easier. Trigonometry, however, is deadly dull to me.
In the third grade, I was given a standardized test to get into a gifted program. On the day of the test I had a painful ear infection, but rescheduling was apparently not an option. So I took the test (an all-day affair) with increasing amounts of pain. By the time I got on the bus to go home, I was crying from the agony. That evening my eardrum ruptured. (Not for the first time, not for the last. I’m lucky my hearing’s never been seriously affected.) I still placed in the 98th or 99th percentile.
When I refused to date a putrid boy who had a crush on me. 
Are they really “stupid” or just not trying? I like to think of them as ignorant.
Been there. Like Anastaseon, I find this oddly comforting.
When I got 100% on my first “exam.” It was a grade 7 science test really, but they called it an exam. It dealt with light properties, electricity and magnetism. Most kids tanked big time. To me, it was almost common sense. I was fascinated with that stuff and today - as an Electronics Technologist - still am.
I think I first noticed that I was more advanced, in certain areas, than the other 1st graders at around age 12.
No, I wasn’t trying.
I realized I was a genius shortly after my dog was sent to that farm to retire. After years of being reassured that I was “pretty on the inside,” I realized that my mother was trying to explain to me the vastness of my intellect on a level that she could comprehend, the poor dear. When I reported my discovery to my “special needs” teacher, she let me use the hard, unflavoured crayons for the first time that year, to celebrate. The next year I was allowed to use scissors for the first time. Since then my intelligence has increased geometrically - I’m at least twice as smart now as I was then.
At my best guess it was somewhere around fourteen or fifteen year old.
I do remember a specific moment where I told myself that I’m more intelligent than my peers. Until then I’d always wondered what I was doing wrong, why I had enemies for no apparent reason.
When I was in first grade and the teacher gave me a fourth-grade math book.
I realized how dumb I was in 5th grade when I asked a girl for a date.
I found out when I was in college that there are multiple kinds of intelligences. A-ha!