Einstein I’m not. I’m okay with that. Physicism is not a career path I entertained. Actually, I don’t even think physicism is a word. I just wanted to be at least as smart as my sweetie-piesky, Mickey D. But I’m not. He pokes fun at me to this day that I’m lagging behind him a smidge.
He came up with this notion many years ago when he was in University and asked if I would be a guinea pig for a classmate of his. I said yes.
Just like when I said yes to my brother to be his guinea pig in 1974: “Hey, Al. Jump behind the wheel of my homemade go-cart, okay? I wanna see if it’ll make it all the way down Dead Man’s Hill without the wheels flying off”.
It did not.
And I said yes when that same brother asked: “Will you lie down here? Lets see if it’s possible to free yourself when you are rolled in blankets, bound, blindfolded and gagged.”
It is not possible.
Well, this guinea pig was about to try out a more intellectual path.
“Hey, Al. A guy from school could use your help. Can you go to his class and let him give you an IQ test? The results don’t matter – it’ll be fun.”
It was not.
“If a train was heading east at 147 km/hour with a 33 km/hour head wind on a track with a 5 degree incline, how many minutes would it take for you to travel from the caboose to the engine car?”
“Depends. Where’s the bar car?”
Okay, I made that one up but there were math and vocabulary questions; spatial skill drills and logic (like that’s one of my strong suits).
My short term memory was challenged. I could barely remember what I had eaten for breakfast and, ah, where was I, oh, the IQ test.
The fellow moved skilfully from one set of tests to another.
“Time for Geometrics” he stated.
Geometrics: How well one can comprehend geometric relationships of lines, sides, planes, angles, and topological properties.
Oh, I was in trouble. My brain hurt. It would have been easier for me to dismantle the brakes on my car and head to the top of Dead Man’s Hill.
Rote Utilization. Algebraic. Intuition. Computation Speed.
I couldn’t even spell I – Q by this point.
Finally, he took all his notations and disappeared to summarize his findings.
I headed up a 5 degree incline towards the bar car.
Mickey received his friends test results for the both of us.
“It looks like you scored Superior.”
Well, in slightly more time than it took me to blast out: “IN YOUR FACE! YOU’RE DARN TOOTIN’ I’M SUPERIOR”, he hit me with “Oh, sorry. His final comments for you are down here. You scored high average.” Mickey had scored Superior.
The only thing wrong with being high average is knowing that for a whole 1.2 seconds, I was Superior (kinda). But honestly, do you think someone who is ‘average’ could come up with physicism and sweetie-piesky? I highly doubt it.