One Saturday I was looking after the girls.  In a quiet moment I decided to check out Facebook.  Now, I have to confess that I’m not a big fan of Facebook.  I have a blog and that’s quite enough for me, thank you very much.  However, from time to time people send me messages on Facebook and I feel obliged to read them and perhaps (if I’m feeling generous) provide some manner of curt response.

So I checked it out and lo and behold several people had sent me various forms of tests.  It just so happens that I LOVE tests (just ask any of my high school teachers) (this entire sentence, by the way, is a test to see just how well you detect sarcasm).  There was a test on optical illusions, so I took it and scored ridiculously high, 19 out of 20.  It wasn’t a very hard test.  If you think I’m bragging read on, for humiliation awaits, I assure you.

Buoyed by this success, I ventured onto the next test.  Bear in mind that my girls were playing quietly in the adjacent room at this time.

It was an IQ test.

Oh what the heck, I thought.  How hard can an online IQ test be?  I clicked START.

Right away I was in trouble.  It turned out the test was TIMED.

Tick, tick, tick.  I answered the first few questions fine.  Questions about trains, and shapes, and parameters.  Questions involving oranges, penguins, and iambic pentameters.  Sudden one of my girls wanted something.  I got her a glass of water.  The other girl wanted something.  I got her a glass of milk. 

Tick, tick, tick.  Time was running out.

I answered another question.  Fielded a few more issues with my girls.  Broke up a fight over a purple ball.  Answered a few more questions, half concentrating on the questions, half concentrating on the drawings my girls wanted me to look at, feeling increasingly stupid.  Suddenly, inexplicably, my wife came home.  I answered another question.  Unfortunately it wasn’t a question from the online IQ test, it was a question from my wife concerning why the bathroom floor was all wet, and there was soap all over the fridge. 

Fourteen more seconds in the test.  I guessed at the last four responses.  Something about pie shaped objects, and mice.  Venn diagrams and reticular orifices. 

I failed the final test miserably, which was whether to proceed to the results.  (The correct answer would have been NO.)

Along with the results came publication to the rest of the online Facebook community.

Congratulations, the results read.  You are a MORON!  My IQ was a well-rounded 62, or the like.

Now I must tell you that I have had official IQ tests in the past.  Three, to be exact.  And I know the results of each of them. 

Let’s just say I scored rather higher on those than on the Facebook version.

Being a husband and father has clearly taken a rather gruesome toll on my…

…ooh!  Something shiny…!