"You should take the Mensa test," Chuck suggested. 

"Me? What makes you think I'd have a snowball's chance of passing that test?"

"I'd be very surprised if you didn't."

My mother, bless her well-intentioned heart, had raised me to believe that I was incurably stupid. I learned, years after her death, what everyone else already knew: she kept the truth from me because she didn't want me to get a "big head," didn't want me to be conceited or feel in any way superior to anyone else - in the world!

I took my first IQ test in high school. My family, upon seeing my miserable grades, decided that I must be mentally retarded, since no one in their family could possibly do so badly without being severely mentally challenged. My mother wouldn't tell me the results. She only told me that I scored high, but that my sister's IQ was higher. The family was crushed to learn that I wasn't brain dead. Now they had absolutely no reason - or excuse - to offer their friends as to why I was such a poor student. I was truly an embarrassment to them and possibly even damaged their social standing in the community, which they held very dear indeed.

If they had bothered to ask, I could have told them what the problem was. But instead, they chose to send me to a series of shrinks, none of whom was interested in hearing my side of the story.

I was terminally bored! Period!!

When I was still in grade school - perhaps the 2nd or 3rd grade - the principal or my teacher told my mother that I was far ahead of my class and should be advanced by a grade or two. My mother, in her maternal wisdom, decided that I'd be happier being bored, but with my friends than I would be if I were challenged, and with a new set of friends.

I breezed through the next three or four years and even part way through junior high. Soaked up like the proverbial sponge whatever my teachers had to offer, spent virtually no time studying, went to my ballet classes and theatre classes, had a lot of fun with my friends, and maintained acceptable -if not always outstanding - grades.

When I reached high school, I had absolutely no study skills. Outside of dancing, acting, and having fun with my friends, nobody had offered me anything of particular interest or any help in how to master the required subjects by actually sitting down and learning them. I did very poorly. And the family had my IQ tested and sent me to shrinks.

I flunked out of college on my first try. Aced all my theatre classes, failed everything else. In the middle of a series of incredibly stupid and ultimately failed marriages, I decided to give higher education another try.

I had always been interested in technology in a kind of 'Wow! That's very cool' kind of way. I decided to go to a local tech school and study electronics. So that they could determine which math classes to put me in, I was required to take a placement test. It was one of the worst traumas of my life.

I had been told how terminally stupid I was for so long and had believed it for so long that I was physically ill the day of the test. I think it was an extreme fear that the test would prove that they had all been right and that I would, once again, bring shame and embarrassment to my long-suffering family. I got out of bed that morning, made a mad dash for the bathroom, and - one way or the other - lost everything I'd ingested in the previous three days, I swear!

All the way to the school, I focused on reminding myself that this was merely a placement test, that no one was going to be judging me, that I'd already been accepted by the school, and even my school loan had been approved. I knew people even dumber than I was who had been accepted and, by Gawd, if they could do it, I certainly could (maybe, possibly...).

The teaching style in some of my classes was to get the students to memorize which formula to use in which situation - just learn it! In math class one day, I asked the instructor to explain a concept - why something worked the way it did and what the various parts of the equation actually meant or from whence they derived, or some such thing. The guy looked at me and said, "Lady, if you want to understand that kind of stuff, you're in the wrong school. Go to Ohio State if you want to understand what you're doing!"

So I did.

Unfortunately, as a divorced woman, I had to work full time to support myself. And as a rather innocent and naive (not to mention overly optimistic) college student, I overestimated my energy. Carrying a full load and working full time... well, it only took me five quarters to reach terminal burnout. But... and this was the most important part... I made good grades. Really good grades (in the classes I didn't drop).

A bit later, between husbands number 3 and 4, I went to business school. More really good grades. Dean's list. Okay, so mom and everyone else was wrong. I was pretty smart.

Husband number 4 and I moved to Colorado, where I got a clerical job with a major oil company. One of my first big projects was to type the manuscript for a textbook on petroleum exploration. When I started with the company, I didn't know even the first thing about geology, except that it had something to do with rocks. I couldn't imaging what went on in the office... what could people possibly do with rocks for 8 hours a day??? Not a clue, I'm embarrassed to tell you.

That manuscript was one of the most exciting things I'd ever read! I learned about how dynamic the earth is, how it moves and shifts around under my feet, and builds up and wears down and - in the process of all this movement and shifting and shaking - traps stuff that, given enough time, turns into oil.

I wanted more! I signed up for my first geology class at what was then the Red Rocks Community College. Within a few months, I got promoted to Geological Technician.

Denver is Geology Central! Now, living in Ohio, I can't imaging that similar classes would have excited me as much as those did. We started work early, so by the time I got to school, there was frequently enough daylight left for at least a brief trip to the Hogback, if not up into the foothills. It is absolutely amazing to be able to read or talk about something in one class, then actually go out and see it in situ before the next class; to be able to chip off a small sample of some semi-precious gem in a little hole in the mountain by the side of the highway; to be able to see dinosaur footprints and smell the oil in the rocks of the hogback where the Dakota formation pushes up through the surface. Or pan for gold in a stream 15 minutes from school.

We went on longer field trips, too. Overnighters to distant parts of the state to look at marble quarries and hunt for fossils and view the remains of the earliest life forms on the planet. Was I turned on? You bet.

It was during one of those field trips that my instructor suggested the Mensa test. I was going through yet another marriage break up from a man that I still believe was fairly intelligent, but for reasons of his own that I'll never understand, preferred to act like a total dumb shit! The thought of contacting other intelligent life was appealing and exciting. Along with the excitement was the lingering fear that I'd find out that my mother had been right all along - I simply didn't measure up! This in spite of the fact that I'd been proving myself to myself with GPAs from 3.75 to 4.0 for a while, in subjects ranging from electronics to business and foreign languages and piano classes and Chinese calligraphy and now, geology and paleontology and aerial photography interpretation and self-paced math through trig.

I transferred to the University of Colorado at Denver to continue my geology studies and maintained a 3.85 GPA until I dropped out (but that's another story). Blame my employer!

But I took it... screwed up my courage and took the flippin' test!

Find out the results on Page 2.
Get me out of here! I really don't care about this at all!