The Test and the Brightest

My job used to afford lots of empty time in the post-midnight hours that required filling, and one early morning my mind found itself attracted to one of those online IQ tests that seem to be everywhere.

So I took it.

And thought, when I looked at the result, I’m smarter than that.

I don’t claim to be an Einstein. I started running into people smarter than I am quite early in life, and the trend has not abated. But still, to have ranked in the IQ vicinity of one of our less-celebrated presidents (according to information thoughtfully provided by the test makers) rankled me. So I looked for a different test, and took it, too.

And scored exactly the same.

Which led to my finding another test, and taking it.

And scoring about 20 points lower.

All right. That last one I attributed to mental fatigue. Testing experts probably would not recommend back-to-back-to-back efforts when your mind has already been taxed by a full day of work and the midnight drowsies and such. Furthermore, I thought, who’s to say that these pop-psychology quizzes of the type that show up online have any real validity, preying as they do on the bored and vain. So I decided to put the test to the test, so to speak.

A few days later, I persuaded my wife to take the first one that I’d taken.

I will not reveal the results. But a word of advice to any fellow husband who might ever be tempted to match brainpower with his wife:

It’s not a smart idea.

Here, There and Everywhere

Cato patiently awaits a decision about what to do with his earthly remains.

My plan had always been to bury him next to his “brother” Clouseau, beneath the day lilies in the side flowerbed. I had a wooden “casket” picked out and the burial shroud - an old, hooded gray sweatshirt of mine. (Clouseau is in a navy blue one.)

But then, on impulse, I had Cato cremated. Ironic, in a sense: After all the time and effort we spent almost every day in his final months to hydrate him, he is now the ultimate in dehydration.

Just as I expect to be someday.

I have plans for the disposal of my own ashes which involve a final trip to my hometown for repose in a place I will not publicly reveal, lest it not be strictly legal. Let’s just say it will be a rare immersion for Joe in water.

A friend with cremation plans wants his ashes divvied up among his best mates, with instructions to disperse them in the place that each identifies most with him. If I should be one of those so entrusted, I will have to find a way to deposit him in the vicinity of what used to be a pool hall on Nolensville Road in Nashville. A private ceremonial scattering in the parking lot, perhaps, with appropriate wording like, “You beat me again, Ed.”

Cato’s ashes could still be buried beneath the flowers, with appropriate ceremony. And I was somewhere between aghast and amused when I saw some of the storage alternatives, including the Buddha cat urn above. But a little research turned up some more palatable choices, and now I‘m reconsidering.

After all, 20 years as the World’s Sweetest (and Sometimes Loudest) Cat certainly earned Cato a permanent spot around the place.

The Tie That Binds

Even as a kid, I never subscribed to the Beaver Cleaver theory that girls are yucky. Pretty much from Day 1 of the first grade, I would scan my female classmates, settle on the perfect one for me, and instantly develop a crush.

Girls, I thought, are not yucky at all. They’re nifty.

And so through elementary school I had a succession of love affairs, many (O.K., most) of them entirely unrequited. As a result, some girls who have long since disappeared from my life - who, let’s face it, never were much in it - nevertheless occupy a fond place in my memory.

But there was one who really held my heart, one with staying power, one whom I watched grow from a feisty little kindergartner into a slinky young teenager: Angela Cartwright.

From “Make Room for Daddy” through “Lost in Space” she captured my imagination, the embodiment of the girl next door who just happened to be a TV actress. Not a particularly good actress, truth be told, but I’m a forgiving sort when dazzled by looks.

Alas, like the others, she eventually fell out of my life. The last I remember of her was a peanut butter commercial - or was it toothpaste? - and then I lost track.

Until I Googled her.

And learned that Angela has her own Web site (of course), with filmography and interviews and scrapbook photos of her career and various calendars, T-shirts, coffee mugs, postcards and the like featuring her own artwork (who knew?). She’ll even autograph pictures, like the one above, as Penny in “Lost in Space,” for $20.

Does she look like that anymore? No. She’s 56. Does she still look good? I think so.

Some crushes have staying power.

Who You Gonna Yell For?

My experience with high school football pep rallies was that they were a group celebration of self-denial.

The students would get together on game day to much music and cheering, attempt to work themselves into a school-spirit frenzy and then demand that the game captains come up and say something rousing like, “Y’all come out and watch us beat Hattiesburg tonight.”

I actually said that at a rally, knowing full well that the only chance we had of beating Hattiesburg was if their entire first (and, to be safe, second) string were to be struck with hysterical blindness very early in the game. If not before.

Fortunately, the ineptness of our team was offset by the attractiveness of our cheerleaders and the enthusiasm of the band. And the rallies gave us all a chance to join in the singing of our shared anthem, the Moss Point High School alma mater.

“On our city’s western borders, reared against the sky,
Proudly stands our alma mater, as the years go by.”

And so on.

I’m not one of those best-years-of-my-life, Springsteen-song guys, but I do have a soft spot for high school and the friends I had there. I don’t even know what my college alma mater was (“Dixie?”) but a high school alma mater has a certain tender nostalgia. (One of the most poignant scenes in TV history is when Ange and Barn sang the Mayberry Union High alma mater after a bittersweet 20th reunion.)

And so it was with considerable distress that I learned that the Moss Point alma mater had been replaced with an entirely new version sometime after my departure.

Who did this, I wondered. And why?

I’m not arguing that the lyrics were particularly, well, lyrical. Nor were they unique; it turns out that Marshall County High School in Lewisburg, Tenn., has the same words exactly, except for the school name, of course. But that isn’t the point. The point is that an alma mater doesn’t belong to some particular group or class, it belongs to years - generations - of alumni.

And I want to find out who thought otherwise.

Hand Me That Hydrometer, Pal

Popular Mechanics published a list of 100 skills its editors decided that every man should know. Some of them are predictable (jump-start a car) some are puzzling (survive lightning) and almost all are stereotypical (rescue damsel in distress).

O.K. That last one isn’t really in there.

But the tenor is the pretty much the same. Except for the occasional androgynous task (use a sewing machine, iron a shirt) the overall implication is that men do manly things, and lots of them.

“I am lucky, my husband surpasses this 100 and can do more,” one female respondent crowed.

Well. I think I’m glad she didn’t feel the need to enlighten us further. But of course we all have additional skills not on the list. For instance, I am fluent in three languages (if you count Igpay Atinlay and Dulfouble Talfalk); can properly use “comprise,” “purport” and “begs the question”; and remember the birthdays of tons of people who have long since gone out of my life.

But do I really need to know how to stick weld or master a coolant hydrometer? I think not.

Instead, here are a few skills I wish I had that aren’t on the list:

Detecting and avoiding a boxing glove headed to my face.

Keeping my mouth shut when I know that opening it is just going to tick my wife off.

Performing routine computer functions without having to e-mail my geek friends in Nashville.

Making a cue ball go where I want it to go.

And playing a musical instrument. But not just any instrument. The guitar, say. Or harmonica.

You know. Something manly.

Either Write Things Worth Reading, Or...

My friend Alan Huffman once asked why I hadn’t considered writing a book. I told him I didn’t know enough words.

“Use some of them twice,” he said.

That approach must work for Alan, who has since written several books, including the latest, “Sultana.”

But the problem for me with nonfiction is that I’m far too lazy to do the kind of research required, even on a subject close to my heart. (Besides, does the world need another book on the refreshing qualities of beer?)

I tried fiction once, with a short story. And I quickly learned that it isn’t enough just to come up with a title. There have to be characters, and they have to say and do stuff. As if I had the imagination for that.

Which leaves available the memoir, a popular field I’ve never fully understood. Is it that these writers all have much better memories than I do, or simply that they’ve led lives filled with experiences much more tragic, comic or inspiring than mine? Or, as with Frank McCourt, both?

I’m not saying my years have been entirely without highlights, but near-starvation and a ne’er-do-well drunk of a father in Depression-era Ireland are not among them. And I’m not sure there is a market for my tale of angst about having to dance at the Farmer’s Ball in high school, or of hydrophobic trepidation at my full-immersion baptism.

Of course, James Frey and “Margaret B. Jones”, among others, have demonstrated that adherence to truth is not necessarily a requirement to get a memoir published. But I suspect that if I tried to mention my rewarding two years of Peace Corps service in Africa, or my daring rescue of 12 first graders trapped in a burning bus, someone in the know would quickly rat me out.

So I remain unpublished, at least in the book world. But if I should ever muster the gumption to try to tell my life story, I at least have constructed the opening line:

“About the time my face cleared up, my hair started falling out.”

Why the Grass Is Greener on the Other Side

The little signs on neighborhood lawns announcing chemical beautification treatments taunt me, reminders that my own grass is trying to make it without performance enhancers.

This is my doing.

Unconvinced that the hundreds of dollars a year we had been spending were doing any particular good, I suspended our lawn service last summer. And I’ve persisted in that stance, despite repeated telephone entreaties to re-up.

The last (and what I hope is final) time I told a guy no, he seemed genuinely puzzled that anyone could be so uncaring.

“What are you doing with your lawn?” he asked.

The answer, which I did not feel obliged to give him, is “nothing.” I have reverted to my previous practice, observed for decades, of a simpler relationship with grass: It grows; I cut it.

Granted, this is contrary to standard practice on Long Island, where chemicals to make grass green (and a wide array of other plants, as well as bugs, dead) are considered essential. So what if, in using them, people are turning the whole place toxic?

Thus I have environmental, as well as economic, principles to stand on.

I also, unfortunately, have some rather bare spots of dirt to stand on, especially in my front yard. (Why is it the grass will happily strive to grow across the sidewalk, without first filling in the yard gaps?) My wife fears an invasion of dandelions from the yard behind (which, in addition to a generally carefree attitude about grass maintenance, displays the same approach for children’s toys, wheelbarrows, discarded furniture and the like).

So my resolve is being tested. Will good triumph over evil? I’m ready to do my part: mow. Grass, the ball’s in your court. Man up.