My Mensa Rejection

The title of last weekend’s post – Hot Sauce, the Common Cold, and Insomnia– reminds me of a Mensa test question. About four years ago, Aquarius decided to take a shot at becoming a member of the elite, high IQ club, Mensa. During his last year of college he did a group project with a girl who is a Mensan, and he concluded that he is just as smart as she is. If she had been accepted, he didn’t see why he shouldn’t be. I, being less confident in my own brain power, refused to subject myself to the test along with him. No one knew about his plan until the night before the test. We were out with our usual group of friends drinking mojitos when Aquarius announced his quest to become a card carrying genius. Maybe it was the alcohol or maybe my friends are all pedantic, but suddenly this was the best idea anyone had ever heard, and it was organized into a group outing. I finally agreed to come along. I had nothing to lose except $30 and a Saturday afternoon, but bragging rights to gain. It was decided that anyone who got in had to buy two mojitos for anyone who failed. I had the feeling that I would be getting several mojitos.

The participants: Me, Aquarius, Capricorn (my brother), Capricorn’s girlfriend (now ex-girlfriend), and Chef Scorpio (longtime friend and former roommate of both Aquarius and Capricorn). The place: our local library in Shreveport, Louisiana at 1:00pm on a hot summer Saturday afternoon. The prize: rum and mint deliciousness or a wallet sized card to prove certifiable genius status.

Emboldened by our group spirit, we waltzed into the library heads held high. We were confident that we would soon be accepted into the ranks of this egghead society. The test proctors looked surprised and pleased to see such a large turn-out. At the rectangular conference table in the group study room was already seated a couple a little older than us and an oily skinned, obese man with a greasy comb-over and a tee-shirt one size too small. Shortly after sitting down, we learned that the obese man had had a tracheotomy. He pointed to Aquarius’s black baseball cap with the white Mac logo and, through his voice box, vibrated out, “Someone has been eating your fruit.” For someone who can’t use his trachea to speak, this man was very talkative. Every time he made a joke he would robotically laugh, “Ha – Ha – Ha – Ha.” In the same staccato manner, he informed us that he is dyslexic but that there is no accommodation for this on the Mensa exam. He also gave us all of the information we would need to look him up on a local dating website of which he was a member. I felt bad for his medical condition, but his social awkwardness would have made him creepy even without the disembodied voice.

I don’t remember a lot from the test except the story about a Greek spring festival in honor of Dionysus. The story was read to us at the beginning and then we had to answer questions about it after we had completed the whole Mensa test. There were some math sections which I am sure that I bombed, but my favorite sections were the opposites, analogies, and completions of similar groups. These were mostly in picture form. For example, what is the opposite of a Japanese business woman? Is it a Japanese business man, or an American business man, or a guy in a hard-hat? That seems pretty easy. It can’t be an American business man because it could just as easily be an Italian business man, and something can’t have as many opposites as there are westernized countries. It could be the construction worker, but then why not a teacher, or a cashier, or a prostitute? It must be the Japanese business man even though all the others seem more opposite. Then, analogies. There was a picture of the motor that goes on the back of a boat and next to it a picture of the boat itself. Is a motor to a boat as a human heart is to the human body, or as a paddle is to a canoe, or as an engine is to a car? I chose the engine because it is mechanical. The problem was that they started getting ridiculously hard. There were series of pictures and you either had to decide which one didn’t belong or pick one from another group that fit in with the first series. For example, strawberry, smiley face, cheese grater. Does it really matter what your answer choices are? Can you fit anything else into this group that would make sense? So now, whenever Aquarius, Capricorn, Chef Scorpio, and I hear something that is either completely ridiculous or completely incomprehensible, we start yelling out random pictures from the Mensa test – bow tie, cheese grater, Eiffel Tower, rock, cake.

Once the test was over, we decided to reward ourselves by having Chef Scorpio cook a tasty dinner. Walking down the pasta aisle in the grocery store, we heard what sounded like computerized text to speech erupt from behind us, “I hope you don’t think I’m stalking you.” We turned around to see our fellow test taker rolling toward us in one of those motorized scooters they keep by the shopping carts. I hope he didn’t get in because if he did, I would feel like the biggest loser. A few weeks later our letters arrived in the mail. I knew the results without opening them. Aquarius’s envelope was significantly bulkier than mine. Chef Scorpio and I are the only two out of the five who are not geniuses, but we decided that we are pretty smart for picking genius friends. So what item would complete the series of hot sauce, the common cold, and insomnia? Clearly, the answer is Nyquil.