The IQ of the Beholder

What is considered a decent IQ? I think 200 is genius or something, so probably 100 would be average. Or half a genius. Depending on how you look at it. I supposed if I had a high IQ, I would know how to look at it. Truth is, I do have a high IQ but it has gotten me absolutely nowhere so far. In grade school, it was sort of important. It carried some weight. Not with other kids, of course. Unless you were looking to whoop some ass or get yours whooped. "She has the highest number...let's get her!!" And then I made everyone tackle Maureen Podlewski. I'm kidding. No one tackled Maureen. She punched me once. I was not going to mess with her no matter how high her number was. I think adults were way more into IQ's back then. Adults and Maureen. They would get all atwitter about a kid scoring higher than 160 but what did it really mean? Somewhere along the line I'd heard those tests were based on a curve, so big deal. You're smarter than the rest of us hanging out closer to the top of the bell. Good luck with that. Straight to Jeopardy! Although Jeopardy is way harder than an IQ test (unless you yell your answers really loud at the TV in a roomful of people and "sound" right all the time). If you've ever taken an IQ test, you probably know that it's just a lot of patterns and numbers and funny math. And dare I say, the more often you take the test, the "smarter" you get. You can take one on the internet right now and score a 12. Go ahead, take it again... I bet you get a 146. Then enter your cell phone for some really great offers! Things like free ballroom dance lessons and a commercial airline ticket to anywhere in the continental U.S. It's sort of sad, what's happened to the IQ, or "intelligence quotient" as we 146-ers like to call it. It's gone the way of the dodo (irony...) and vanished as a reliable measurement of one's thinker. I excel at patterns and funny math, but rarely am I challenged in real life to fill in the missing number from a series of numbers. Or count the number of boxes within a diagram. Or determine which shape comes next in a row of shapes that have been progressively altered. It's nice to get the answers right, but I still can't dial my parents' full phone number from memory, neatly pack a suitcase or hang a picture without a level. I love puzzles, I really do. Sudoku is singularly responsible for settling my nerves in any seat on an airplane. Added bonus: no one talks to me. (Unfortunate shortcoming: it does not stop babies from crying). As a kid, I read the book on how to solve Rubik's cube and then proceeded to solve every Rubik's cube in Meijer's on the weekends as my mom shopped for groceries. I enjoy colors and shapes and numbers and patterns and how everything fits together, but I still wash reds with whites, end up with pinks and throw things in the dryer that don't belong. It's really great that I can read assembly instructions and diagrams better than most (thanks to years with Legos), but I have a drawer full of extra screws, plastic nubs, tiny dowels and nuts (no bolts) that much of my furniture survives without. I'm skeptical about my IQ. If the number is high, I don't think it means you're smart. I think it means you did a good job answering some brain teasers that maybe other people could give two shits about. I like that I'm good at little challenges, tricky questions, story problems. But I hate that I have no idea how to take apart a car and put it back together again. It bugs me that I don't know much about Mars. And I could kick myself for not paying more attention during the botany unit in school. I am killing yet another beautiful plant as I sit here. It's on my window sill. The Sun Star. I think it's South African. Knowing that most South Africans visiting America do not drop dead upon arrival due to drastic climate changes, I'm thinking the demise of this plant is surely my fault. My IQ is no help with how often to water this thing. I started out giving it as much as I would need, but then again, I pee. I thought I would get smarter with age. It would seem smarts are directly related to effort at this point. If I want to be more intelligent, my pursuits must shift from idly playing games on my niece's Webkins account (Cash Cow is awesome because it's all about colors and patterns!!) to actually reading something informative. Actually retaining that information is another story, but I'm not going to put down my cocktail to pick up a book. I've got two good hands for a reason. I'm capable (and smart) enough to sip and absorb at the same time. I might even let you know what I find out...

When I Lay Dying...

I haven't decided yet. I'm supposed to blog about cremation vs. burial. Do I come up with uplifting topics or what?! I guess now that I'm on the other side of 40 I should start weighing these options a little more heavily. I do this believing that they are the only options for my "remains" (I put "remains" in "quotes" because they are hypothetical and when spoken, the word is also "accented" with the right and left-handed two-fingered "air quote" gesture.) I know I could come up with better ways to dispose of me than a coffin or a match, but it just isn't practical. Why bother others with it? I mean who would want to hear after my passing that I want to be shot into space? Or strapped to a jetski and released into the waves toward Hawaii? I have no plans to go to Hawaii while living, but hey, once I'm dead I might even take that flight. Forget the jetski, put me in 14B next to a crying baby. What do I care? Make me hold the baby. I won't know the difference. What if I wanted to be frozen? But not in a lab, more like somewhere in Alaska. Put me on ice, right along one of those cruise lines so at certain times of the year, I can be seen with binoculars. Embed me in a sort of clear ice chamber, if you will, so I can see out and you can see in. Go ahead, have a whole conversation right in front of me about how bazaar it is. I don't care. I can't hear you. It seems so defeatist to choose immediately between ashes and soil. Can't I be seen just a little while longer even if I can't see back? Cremation seems the more practical choice. I am no nonsense. I don't want to be a burden. Reduce me to fluff and seal me in a small pot. The pot can be decorative. I can sit on a mantle for a while. I can remind others of the good times. Until the pot is deemed worth something. Then I am accidentally sold in a yard sale by the neighbor's kid. This is all because rather than honor my wishes of having my ashes spread atop Mount Washington (they must be hiked up, not driven...I can be a bit of an ass), everyone decided to keep me around a little longer. Now who knows where I'll end up. So maybe going six feet under is better. Put me in a box. Say your good-byes. Bury me and mark the spot with a rock. You can always come back and say hi. I'm not going anywhere. The thought of that makes me sweat a little. I commiserate with people who say they don't want to be buried because they are claustrophobic, but at the same time, I like to believe when dead I won't notice. I am annoyed to no end by people who refuse burial because they fear becoming "worm food." So annoyed I have once again employed the use of air quotes. Truth is, some of those coffins look pretty cozy. I see all that satin-y lining. Soft pillows. A nap with the lid open can't be that bad. It's when they close the lid I panic. Kind of like how I panic at the thought of being conveyor belted into the oven. This is what makes the decision so hard. I don't really know what will happen when my cold feet hit the flames or when the lid closes on my quiet frame. I think the point is to never know. Not that I won't ever die, but that being dead means you are not aware. Everyone else is, but not you. Given that, I should take a poll. What's easiest? Ashes or a me-sized box? Would you rather have me on your mantle (rotate among family and friends seasonally) or in the ground (you come to me, at your convenience)? I'm always impressed by others who know without question they want to be cremated. Equally so by those who unwaveringly say "I want to be buried." The gift of compromise is my burden...I suppose I wouldn't mind being buried so much if I were just a pile of ash. Dig a small hole in the backyard and put what's left of me in it. So, to the flames first! And then to the earth to think about what I've done.

Back to School

When you're in school, maybe you don't think it's so cool, but looking back on it now I really miss it. I miss having a desktop that opened by lifting, not double-clicking. I miss doing assignments on that desk, trying to find a smooth spot to write on. I miss the little one-inch tray along the front of the inside where I'd put my pencils and pens and a crayon or two, maybe a found penny or random paperclip. Sometimes even a little stash of cinnamon toothpicks carefully packaged in saran wrap until they were deemed contraband and confiscated by a frowning teacher's aid. Too hot for us kids, I guess. I miss marbles. I used to have a shit ton of marbles. I didn't call them that then. But I'm older now and the way I describe quantities has changed significantly. Not to mention substantially. I could also use butt load. But everybody knows a shit ton is more than a butt load, especially since I had a butt load of steelies alone. Steelies were silver marbles made out of what I presumed to be steel, but it could have been any combination of metals. All that mattered was they were heavier than your average marble and could crack a cat's eye or a boulder pretty easily in one shot. I kept all my marbles in a purple velvet bag with a yellow cord. This bag used to hold liquor. My grandma gave it to me. Or, I found it around the house. I have lost a shit ton of memory since those days. Probably due to my own purple bags of alcohol. But I do remember one thing: I was awesome at marbles. You might say, how convenient. You remember yourself being good at it, but what if you are just suppressing all the times you lost to Scottie or Maureen or that kid from the assembly about drugs who had hairy arms? Even though I've lost a lot of them since, I can guarantee you I had all the marbles then. And how you come by marbles, people, is through victory. When you hit someone else's marble, you take it. I hit a lot of marbles. And if I have to play the Susie Falaska card, I will. Susie Falaska was my best friend in grade school and I'm fairly certain we had detailed conversations and made notes of our marble conquests. That's another thing I miss about school. All those hours wiled away with so many friends on subjects ranging from who’s the best at bombardo to pumping the swings hard enough to lift the poles off the ground. I was out with my friends in the present the other night and Leslie said something about an adult kickball league. I was immediately interested. I have been trying desperately to remember the last play I ever made in kickball but I know I never will because hey, who knew at the time it would be my last? Was it a spectacular catch of a smash line drive? Was it a diving stop and subsequent throw-out of some poor wimp caught between 2^nd and 3^rd? Or was it less than stellar…maybe I tripped over myself trying to kick one out of the park and instead dribbled it back to the pitcher for an easy out to end the game? How embarrassing. An opportunity to erase that one among total strangers who want the same level of redemption must be seized. Surely kickball on a Saturday afternoon beats four hours of chasing a much smaller, much harder, much more dimply white ball in and of the woods with sticks better suited for mole-whacking? Anything that reminds me of school gives me pause these days. I know there are lots of different schools, different ages, different phases in life when you’re actually in school, but when I say school I mean before junior high (when you get all pimply) and well before high school (when you feel oppressed by the man). I miss grade school. I really enjoyed the simplicity of that age. The appreciation for inventiveness, creativity and doing something no one else had ever done in quite that way. I remember starting a newsletter in 5^th grade. It was a one-pager that I ran off on the ditto machine in the principal’s office. The ink was very purple and so was I after every deadline. I’ll never forget the smell of that ink and my own thumbprints in the margins as I passed out the latest edition. I hand wrote all the articles in columns and drew cartoons for the pictures. I remember finishing my first (and last) novel that same year on that same ditto machine: “Devil Shark Island,” a PG-13 tale of an incredible escape from some very mean sharks. I remember coveting things out of GRIT Magazine, so much so that I became a salesperson of said magazine. I remember teaming up with classmates to write a commercial for a brand new toothpaste. We even sang a jingle. I remember doing a slide presentation on safari animals. I brought in my parents’ projector and everything. I was very into A/V and it makes me smile to think how far we’ve come just in my lifetime. If I’d had a laptop and Power Point as a kid…well, maybe I’d have become bored with it, too. My Dad recently showed me a picture I remember from way back when, before I think I was even in school, of me and my sister playing with our favorite toys. Hers was something Barbie, mine was called “Future Phone.” It said “Future Phone” really big in computer-y letters on the box. And of course, I’m on the phone. Calling the future. If I was talking to me, I wish I would have told myself to repeat everything that happens to me over and over again in my head so I will always remember it. Or, a wrong number might have been nice…I could still be there.