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...

One Good Fool

Today is my birthday. I've always felt secretly pleased to have been born on a day for fools. It's like being handed a "get out of being serious for free" card. Expectations are immediately lowered. Levels of amusement markedly raised. I can be a goofball and well, we knew this would happen. The thing is, it almost didn't happen. My mother is charged with telling me my birth story every year (it is tradition), but I wonder if I shouldn't just tell it like I've heard it all these years and see if I'm right on or if I'm not as great a listener as some of my past bumper stickers have claimed. I will likely romanticize it more than she did. I will put in a few fade outs for effect. I will create a sense of urgency that the nurses may not have felt. And my mother's hair will be perfectly sprayed into a beehive I recall from one of her earliest photos with me. Or was it Aunt Susan? At any rate, here it goes...I was born on April 1, 1968 in Fort Knox, Kentucky at Ireland Army Hospital. My Dad was in Vietnam. My Mom was there (heh heh). I believe either on that very day or days before she was driving my Dad's old stick shift car somewhere and got stuck on a hill and the car kept rolling back. It could have been months before. I just know that my Mom can't drive a stick and I can and she always says the only reason is because she was pregnant with me and was stuck on that hill. If only I'd been born sooner! I could've clutched her out of there. Anyway, I digress. The sheets at Ireland Army Hospital were very green, the doctors and nurses were all decked out in green, my Mom's gown was green and the whole place was one big shamrock green building. Hence, my subsequent degree from Michigan State. Mere blocks away was a huge vault of gold (Fort Knox) and a horse racing track. I was destined to be rich and love horses. One out of two is not bad. When my Mom went into labor I was two weeks early. I was not expected to arrive until April 12, which coincidentally, was my Grandpa's birthday. It would have been equally special to share this date with him and quite likely would have excused me from a few minor indiscretions (beer, whiskey, cards, pretty women), but being funny would not have been nearly as, well, funny. I'm told showing up early was not my idea. It was brought on by a series of seemingly repeatable circumstances but in hindsight, not enviable. My mother is a chocolate covered cherry fanatic. They were then, and I believe still are, her favorite. She ate two boxes on March 31. Listen, she was preggers, her husband was on the other side of the world, my sister was running around in diapers, maybe the cable went out, probably it was cold outside, give her a break. Minutes later she wasn't feeling so hot, so my Oma (her mom and in many ways, my beloved second mom) rushed her to the hospital where no less than 12 blood sugar specialists soaped up and put on their surgical masks to consult her about the baby. "Mrs. Fracker, there's a good chance your baby will be born mentally challenged." Fade out. And we're back...it's April 1, about 9:30 p.m. The room is packed with doctors and nurses. Many looks of concern and anxious whispers. My Mom is so matter of fact, I can only imagine her saying, "I will have the baby now" in a thick German accent with her perfectly swooped beehive and then everyone prepping for delivery. Turns out it was a good idea to just get it over with. I popped into the world at 10:00 p.m. weighing in at a cool 6 lbs. 7 oz. or something like that (I still fudge my weight a little, a girl's gotta have some secrets) and a whopping 22" long. Tall for my age then. Not so much now. It's hard to tell at the time if I was mentally challenged. I couldn't hold a pen and Sudoku hadn't come onto the American scene yet. But there's no question I was an April Fool's baby, which my Grandma (Dad's mom) delighted in calling me from that day forward. My Dad found out in code that I'd made it into the world. The overseas call was a bit garbled, but one line came through loud and clear: "Mr. Fracker, your wife Sue Ann had the baby." Since my Mom's name is Helga, this could have been cause for confusion or jail time, but he knew what it meant. They both agreed if I was a girl, I'd be named Sue Ann, for some famous actress at the time whose name looked beautiful on the big screen in the only scripty font available at the time. 10 months later, Pops and I met for the first time in a local restaurant over steaks and fries. Me in my high chair, him in the booth. By way of introductions, I crumpled up my napkin and threw it at him. To this day, that's still how I greet people. I relish being a fool. And I thank my parents for giving me such an auspicious start. Happy Birthday to me...Mom, let me know if I got it right.