I was a genius for a day

When I was at school I was often called into the headmaster's office and given a stern talking to about my marks. I was called an underachiever as apparently I had a very high IQ and should have been performing much better. I managed to scrape through school and have to be honest, have continued that trend until the present. I have never considered myself particularly intelligent and I think this reflects in my status.

I had dinner with an old school friend recently, and she reminded me of a particular day at school. We were both called down to the library where we were told that there would be no lessons for us that day, and, together with 4 other students from the school will be writing some tests. Succeeding in these tests would mean getting an offer to attend a school for the gifted.

I have to be honest, I thought they had made a mistake with me as I was barely scraping through school and the other 5 in the room were all academics with A averages. I didn't want to leave my school anyway so I didn't take the tests seriously and made sure I buggered up some of the easier questions. Needless to say, I wasn't offered a position in the propellerhead school. My mum was gutted, but still bought me a goldfish for being 'a clever boy'.

Anyway, after speaking to my friend, a good 20 years after that day, I started wondering. I never did find out what my IQ was. What if I was truly gifted, and all these years I could have been earning millions as a rocket scientist? So I decided to find out.

What better way than to try and get into Mensa. So I applied for their home test which I received, completed (rather easilly) and sent off, together with a cheque for £9.95 for 'admin fees'. A couple of days later I get a letter back from them saying that I am a 'strong candidate' for acceptance, and reading on, am in the top 1% in the country with an IQ of 155. 155, that's good right?

A bit of googling later it would appear that an IQ of 155 is pretty much off the scale, a 'genius'. We are talking Phd stuff, doctors, professors, nobel prize winners. Old Bert Einstein only had an IQ of 160 for goodness sake. Now you can imagine I started to feel a little better with life, and wondering what I should do with my future, what university courses I should do (astrophysics perhaps, and maybe philosophy, as a sideline) and so on. WHEN I get accepted by Mensa, I could meet all these influential people that could give me opportunities I could have only dreamed of.

Then I found this. A scenario of a balloon and a javelin springs to mind.

So I am what I always thought I was, just a regular guy who tries to get through life without breaking too much of a sweat. Still, it was nice to feel like a genius for a day.