Last week, I took an online intelligence test – a big mistake, and one you’d better believe I won’t make again. Not only did I waste forty-five minutes answering incomprehensible questions involving sequential order and seating arrangements and which breakfast food did not belong to a given group, and not only could I have better spent that three-quarters of an hour working on my MFA applications or doing chores or clipping my toenails, but after I breezed through the test and clicked on the “Calculate My IQ” button, I most decidedly did not get the “congratulations, o genius” score for which I’d hoped. No, I got a much lower score than I had anticipated, one which corresponded roughly with the score a boiled vegetable would have received, and when Ernie phoned me a short time later, I told her rather irritably that I couldn’t talk just then because I had to go out and buy myself a box of adult diapers and a pair of sneakers that fasten with Velcro. Naturally, she wanted to know what I meant, and then naturally she wanted to take the test herself, and naturally she landed in a higher intelligence bracket than I did, and as a result she had to spend the next thirty minutes helping me scrape my self-esteem off the carpet with a spatula while saying comforting things like “you would have done really well on it if you had gotten a few of the questions right” and “well, you might think like a cooked turnip, but you dress a lot better.”

Eventually, I calmed down and realized that I never should have taken the bloody test to begin with, because it contained oodles of math questions and logic questions, for which I have zero aptitude, and not very many verbal questions, which I rely on in order to avoid getting a score with the square-root symbol in it. I am probably the only student in the history of formal schooling for whom a math teacher has paused while handing out a test to shout, “All right, Miss Bunting, knock it off with the ritual sacrifices or you and the goat BOTH get detention!” The other girls in my Calculus sections brought a calculator and a handful of sharpened pencils to class; I brought a portable altar and a live hen. And I can’t cope with the logic questions, either, because I do not think logically, and furthermore, I can’t bring myself to care about whether Sally and Thomas and Vera and William sit beside across from one another or beside one another. Now, if Sally sat in Thomas’s lap, or if Sally and Vera had a catfight, or if William had a drinking problem and started guzzling gimlets at the table, then I could get into it, but I just can’t get interested in a seating chart. Add to this the fact that I whizzed through the test in half the time allotted and didn’t turn off the television while taking it, and I have no choice but to conclude that my test score is essentially meaningless. In the end, standardized tests don’t measure much beyond the test-taker’s ability to . . . take standardized tests.

Below, you’ll find an intelligence test which I made up myself. I call it the TNAT – the Tomato Nation Aptitude Test. I like my test better than other tests, primarily because it allows the test-taker an outlet for the frustration and depression occasioned by these dehumanizing tests.

Sharpen those number-two pencils, and let’s begin.

LANGUAGE SKILLS

“Book” is to “library” as “tree” is to

a) forest

b) a big group of trees

c) what kind of library, exactly, because lending libraries differ from research libraries, and then again you might mean a den-type library, like on The Brady Bunch

d) 12

e) huh?

“To evade” means

a) to avoid or elude purposefully

b) I think it involves “away” or something

c) I’d like to speak to a lawyer

d) three-fourths

e) who in the what now?

If a group of geese is a gaggle, a group of whales is a

a) pod

b) ooh, ooh, I know this one! It’s a murder! Unless that’s crows. Oh, crap

c) a whaggle? Man, I hate these

d) both a) and c)

e) I have no idea what you’re talking about

Beige; maroon; green; teal; pink. Which of these colors isn’t like the others?

a) green

b) teal, obviously – it’s so eighties, and not in a good way

c) my test-prep instructor told me we wouldn’t have to know any art history

d) purple

e) what do I look like?

LOGIC AND PROBLEM-SOLVING

Annabel, Beverly, Carla, David, Edward, and Frank all go out to dinner. Annabel and David both want to sit with their backs to the wall. Beverly doesn’t want to sit next to David, but she does want to sit next to Frank; nobody else at the dinner table wants her to sit next to Frank, but Carla doesn’t want to sit next to Frank either. If Edward sits next to Annabel and Edward sits across from Beverly, who orders the appetizer?

a) Beverly and Carla

b) the guys – I mean, the girls would get salads, right?

c) I can’t possibly answer this without knowing the special – unless it’s patÈ. It’s patÈ, right? Okay, I know this one, but do you mean who orders the patÈ, or who takes a bite of someone else’s order, or what? And how do these people know each other?

d) the cosine

e) oh, for fuck’s sake – who cares?

If all lawyers wear suits, and some suits need pressing, can we say that some lawyers’ suits need pressing?

a) yes

b) well, that depends on how you feel about the knife crease

c) um – “casual Fridays”?

d) the y axis

e) please tell me you’re kidding – and that pun is miserable, by the way

You go to the post office to mail a package, arriving at two o’clock. Seven people are standing in line ahead of you; three of them have letters, two have small boxes, one has a large and awkwardly-shaped box, and one isn’t holding anything at all. The post office has five clerks on duty, each of whom requires two minutes to process large packages and one minute to process small packages, but each clerk takes a different amount of time to process letters. Assuming that one clerk will take a ten-minute smoke break and another one will slow down his/her processing rate while gossiping with a friend, what time can you expect to leave the post office?

a) two twenty-seven

b) I think I’ve gone to the branch you describe, and I don’t think “leaving” factors in – do the words “Hotel California” mean anything to you?

c) “Smoke break”? “SMOKE BREAK”? My tax dollars pay for postal employees to pollute their lungs with the devil weed while I tap my foot in line? Well, I never! Oh, that reminds me – what about refilling a postal meter? Because you don’t address that in the question

d) the square root of 17

e) don’t make me come over there

Grandma made a rhubarb pie for Sunday dinner. If she divides the pie into twelve pieces, and the family eats forty percent of the remaining pie at each sitting, when will the family finish the pie?

a) Tuesday

b) ew, rhubarb. Well, I’d give mine to the dog, but the rest of my family would probably eat the whole thing. Savages, my cousins – I could tell you stories

c) didn’t extras in crowd scenes mutter that in old movies? “Rhubarb, rhubarb.” Oh, right – I don’t know, two days? My grandmother died, so I really have no idea

d) gentlemen, I believe you have misspelled the term “pi”

e) I hate everyone, including “Grandma” – IF THAT’S HER REAL NAME

Taking for granted that the volume of a sphere is V, and the diameter of the same sphere is D, calculate the volume of one quarter of the sphere.

a) I don’t know

b) I don’t know

c) I don’t know

d) I don’t know

e) I want my mommy

Confused yet? Well, now you know how I feel when I take a test that doesn’t consist entirely of vocabulary questions. I’ve long maintained that everyone is “smart at” different things. I, for instance, am “smart at” writing hate mail to ETS, and if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go play to my strengths.

Bloody bastards.

Help defeating the bloody bastards.

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