Thanks Liz -

Getting the score 135 on the mensa test means just that you did just that! It means Sweet Fanny Adams in the realities of life!

Why would I want to come out of the rain? Saves having to wash!

I have graduated from the SCA too... :-) I grew up!

I'm a Wordsmith (my main field of expertise - look for the BS thread on Toby Day Afternoon ), who is also highly competent in technical and mechanical and engineering areas, as long as it does not involve hand-eye coordination. But I do have an extreme sense of humour, and I no longer care if others can see the humurous links I make or not - if you do, hang on and enjoy the ride!

In Blacksmithing, for example, I have difficulty in striking accurately with the hammer (so the hammered work always looks like "a dog's breakfast"), but I can build a welding fire in the forge in my sleep, and I can temper tool steel (a visual controlled skill) exceptionally well - a natural at it. But I couldn't make a living at Blacksmithing. I could also do the acid/base titrations in Analyl Chem better than anyone else - so much that the lecturer used to get me to do the demo to demonstrate that any klutz (taking into account my performance in the rest of the lab practice!) could do the titrations - where you have to get that last drop to just faintly colour the whole flask... :-)

So I have kept trying many things...
many many things,
many many many things...
(get the British Comedy reference?)

And that's the problems with Formal Education. Because of the physical damage in some very small areas of the brain, I have difficulty remembering cold facts - I have to remember them in a relational frame, which is why I am a natural at seeing relationships among many apparently unrelated fields - a "specialising generalist"... For open book exams I get near 100% - for things like calculus, where you need to remember the magic formulae to do the derivations/integration, I am too slow to pass the exams in the time allotted. But I am exceptional in Spherical Geometry - doing 10 years of Amateur Theatre Lighting, before getting involved in other interests. I could read the play, watch the rehersal, then see the lighting hang plot in my head... and it worked...

Same reason why I am not a Classical concert pianist - but I am good at improvising and sight reading, but hopeless at remembering more than three tunes at once... they also tend to run together, which produces some amusing results at times... :-)

The problem with those who are above average is that they tend to think that they are smarter than every body else. The ego gets in the way. I know my limitations, and am always ready to acknowledge those who are my betters, but not those who just think they are. I am happy to let them have the last word, since they need it for their ego's sake...

The old saying "Those who think they are smarter than everybody else just annoy those of us who are" is true.

I hope others, especially teachers, these days do not treat children the way I was treated at school in the 1950's.

I was abused, put down, humiliated in front of classes and the whole school, given endless "cuts" - hits on the hand with a flexible piece of cane, hundreds of hours of "handwriting practice" after school (imagine wht the result was like - we used a nib and ink in those days!)

for two main reasons -
a) my micro-motor control problem meant that handwriting and any other task involving hand-eye coordination was a disaster (I can't even read my own "chicken scratches" sometimes - makes Lecture Notes a pain! and I generate hundreds of typos, and typos while correcting the typos while doing data entry like this!),

b) and I often could complete the sentence of an average teacher, before they finished it, so I had my answer ready before they expected it, so I must have been a smart-arse too!

I was labelled as a "Problem Child". I also was treated to the "labelling as a non-person" thing, as well as nothing I did, no matter how creative, produced nothing but a put down, never any praise.

In fact the more creative I am the more hostile cloth heads are, so now I know when I get attacked, I am most likely on the right track! Only when amongst really competent people in any particular field am I given respect.

When I did the Mensa test - I failed (about 120 - below 135 - the entry point!) - but when I did the Wasir - I got Plus 5 SD!!!

Simple - because of the micromotor "clerical skills" being factored out in the Wasir, but smeared all through the Mensa style tests. I am bloody hopless at those mensa tests they publish every where. But the mensa psychologist who evaluated my results said, "unusual, but perfectly normal - that's why the Wasir was invented!"

:-)

So much for Thread Creep...

Robin
The Thread Creep! :-)