This is only a test

Last night I had a three and a half hour IQ test as part of a research study at Mass. General Hospital. Riding the 66 bus later that evening, I was hit with a lightning bolt- maybe, despite all my fancy talk and calculated condescension, I'm actually as dumb as a box of rocks.

Word definitions. I was given words like 'police,' 'purpose' and 'enthusiastic,' and I was told to define them the best I could. The test was given orally in front of two female researchers my own age. I was doing pretty well, feeling cocky, loving the sound of my own voice: "Oh, 'panacea?' That'd be a cure-all for all things evil or diseased, from the Greek panakeia. Would you like me to use it in a sentence?" I was starting to think I could be the next Marilyn vos Savant.

Then I came to the word 'number' and the whole damn thing fell apart. I mean, how in the world do you define something so huge and abstract?

At first I said something pithy like, "Numbers are the basic units people use for quantifying amounts." But then the (attractive) researchers looked at me for awhile to see if I had anything else to say. I got nervous, thought about 0 through 9, and said, "There are ten numbers." Shit.