It’s official, I’m a genius

I’m a genius. The Internet said so, and the Internet would never tell a lie. (There really are planet-sized spaceships orbiting the sun, President Obama really is a space alien, the Aztecs did accurately predict the end of the world, and Nostradamus was not just a “lucky guesser.” You get the idea.)

Until recently I was unaware of my genius status, owing in large part to the fact I barely made it through ninth grade Algebra class and that was only because Mr. Paepke couldn’t stand the idea of seeing me yet again the following year.

Though I did fairly well in college, I had to study really, really hard for my grades.

I learned to talk good (“speak well,” my English major girlfriend would no doubt say) in an effort to disguise my somewhat limited cognitive abilities (psst: my dumbness).

As an elementary school student, my younger brothers and sisters—all of them, even my brother Bobby who will never be mistaken for a genius—could kick my butt at flash cards, a fact my old man pointed out at every conceivable opportunity.

So you can see why I hadn’t previously recognized my genius-ness.

In fact, I might have gone my entire life without realizing how smart I truly am had it not been for an online IQ test. According to the IQ website the test would measure my intelligence in several areas; math, language, spatial relationships, problem solving, ability to walk and chew gum at the same time, and so on.

Since the test was free and I had a ton of work waiting for me that I did not want to do, I took the test. It wasn’t particularly hard, even the math portion, but it did take significantly longer than I was expecting. Minutes turned into a half-hour, and then an hour…finally I clicked in my final answer and pushed the “submit” button.

My laptop hummed away contentedly while my test responses wafted over the coffee house’s wifi signal to IQ Central, which tallied up my score and returned my results.

“Congratulations!” came the reply. “Your IQ is 142!”

According to the IQ website, this put me somewhere between “gifted” and “highly gifted.” I immediately felt smarter than I have in years. If my old man had been on hand, I would have printed out the results and stapled them to his forehead!

Even the people at the IQ website were excited by my apparent brilliance. So much so, in fact, that they were willing to let me into their exclusive genius club! All I had to do—now that I was a certified genius—was give them my credit card information and sign up for my first month’s membership.

Hmm…OK, maybe I’m not a genius after all. But I am smarter than that.

Mike Taylor’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.