Often I never even made it to bed. I’d squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I’m now told that this is not called “going to sleep” but rather “passing out,” a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment.

Fall arrived and it rained every day,

I’d heard once in school that if a single bird were to transport all the sand, grain by grain, from the eastern seaboard to the west coast of Africa, it would take… I didn’t catch the number of years, preferring to concentrate on the single bird chosen to perform this thankless task.

Due to my general aversion to machines and a few pronounced episodes of screaming, I was labeled a technophobe, a term that ranks fairly low on my scale of fightin’ words. The word phobic has its place when properly used, but lately it’s been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing. No credit i

turns out that I’m really stupid, practically an idiot. There are cats that weigh more than my IQ score.

The tests we took were designed to determine our eligibility for Mensa, an international association for those with IQs of 132 or higher. Its members come from all walks of life and get together every few weeks to take in a movie or enjoy a weenie roast.

She poured them drinks and forced them to eat, but had she been as poor as she normally pretended to be, I doubt they would have wanted anything to do with her. In their presence she was charming and attentive, but they seemed to need more than just her friendship. Watching her in their company, I could understand why wealthy people usually had oth

Due to his ear and his almost maniacal sense of discipline, I always thought my father would have made an excellent musician. He might have studied the saxophone had he not been born to immigrant parents who considered even pot holders an extravagance. They themselves listened only to Greek music, an oxymoron as far as the rest of the world is conc

The tests reflected my ability to reason logically. Either you reason things out or you don’t. Those who do, have high IQs. Those who don’t reach for the mayonnaise when they can’t find the insect repellent. When I became upset over my test score, Hugh explained that everybody thinks differently—I just happen to do it a lot less than the average ad