Serendipity is a cool thing. Yesterday two items wafted my way: the first, a newspaper article decrying the situation of bright school kids who go to lengths to mask their intelligence from their fellow students; the second, my Mensa renewal packet in the mail. I could have asked for no better reminder of what led me to joining Mensa in the first place and what has kept me renewing—more or less faithfully—ever since.
I take little advantage of Mensa’s social outlets. I don’t go to gatherings or parties or engage in any of the umpty-million groups that are put together by Mensans for just about any and all interest imaginable. I keep up with, and occasionally contribute an article to, the national classical music SIG (special interest group) and that’s really about it. I’m not in Mensa for the social outlets, and I’m certainly not in Mensa out of any desire to strut or pose or posture. I don’t know any Mensans who are strutters, posers, or posturers, for that matter. That’s not what it’s about. Mensa is an organization that restricts membership to people who have a measured IQ in the top 2% of the population. That’s something of an arbitrary cutoff, naturally—what about somebody who scores in the top 2.1%?—and all manner of questions arise about the viability of intelligence scores, their cultural conditioning and assumptions, and the like. Then there’s the nature-or-nurture issue that always pops up in discussions of native intelligence, with at least a certain amount of nature gaining the upper hand. It’s clear enough that fundamental intelligence is a born attribute like hair color, height, or the like. That it can be enhanced (or suppressed) by environment is also clear. Surely there’s no reason for a person with a measured IQ in that 2% to feel superior or smug in any way. That’s like putting on airs because you’re a natural blond; that’s evidence of immaturity and shallowness.
I joined Mensa as a coming-out party for myself, as a statement that I was fed up with pretending. The simple fact was that even as a little kid I could pick up stuff faster than most people. I took to reading like a duck to water and not only read quickly but with excellent retention. I never really needed to study very much, especially not given the watery curriculum of your average American school. School work was so easy for me that I found it boring and wound up with B’s instead of the A’s I should have been getting. One read through an assigned chapter in a history class and I could easily nail the test, but I tended to skim lightly instead of read.
Laziness was only part of the issue. The other was plain old fear. It was bad enough being on the short side of average (I didn’t gain my last few inches of height until my junior year in high school) and extremely lightweight. I was also musical, unathletic, and shy. Add all that together and you’ve got a kid doomed to a miserable existence in most American public schools. I spent most of my time slinking around, avoiding people as best I could, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, the human equivalent of a mouse in its hole. Becoming an A-level student was out of the question; that would draw attention and attention was the last thing in this world I wanted. For the same reason I scrupulously avoided any involvement with my schools’ musical programs. There was safety in obscurity.
I got through high school fairly well with my faux-rodent strategy. I was fortunate in that one of my high schools had a drama club with its own private lounge; I became involved immediately in that club, not so much for the drama stuff, but because of the lounge. I wasn’t at any risk from the theater folk, after all—mostly misfits and oddballs, and delightful companions they were—and I could avoid contact with the larger student body almost entirely. I lived in that lounge when I wasn’t in class.
But through it all I remained a slovenly and inattentive student, content to scrabble through with lowish A’s and the occasional B, paying mostly lip service to classes and rarely taking any stuff home with me. My home time was spent listening to music, practicing the piano, and reading for pleasure, along with a teenager’s usual batch of hobbies which, in my case, meant nearly electrocuting myself any number of times with home-built gizmos.
It wasn’t until I went off to a conservatory that the lights came on. I realized for the first time in my life what it meant really to apply myself, to refrain from following the path of least resistance, to stop settling for less. That was partly from necessity—I was face-to-face with the horrors of music theory, a subject I had assiduously avoided up to then, and my piano teacher was almost at the point of dismissing me for my slovenly habits and inattentiveness—and partly from a growing sense of pride. It was probably the first time in my life that I acknowledged that I actually was a smart person and that I had everything to gain from cultivating what had been previously an unwanted and unvalued attribute. So I got to it, at first tentatively and then with ever-increasing confidence. By my sophomore year I was moving up fast, both academically and musically. I became one of those kids who goes into a funk if he gets a 99.5% instead of a perfect score on his music history test. I was the star of my solfège class, practically the teacher’s pet of a legendarily tough cookie of a professor. And, mirabile dictu, I was not only nailing my theory course, but I was coming to dig and appreciate music theory at long last. (Talk about your basic irony: not that many years later I would be teaching theory in another conservatory, and after a while would wind up chairing a theory department.)
So it was time for an official coming-out party, as it were, although I waited a while before taking the step of actually sitting down with a group of people and taking the Mensa qualification exam. It hovered in the back of my mind for years, always nagging at me quietly. I had more than enough evidence to point to my having a Mensa-level IQ, but at the same time some doubts prevailed. What if I were deceiving myself? What if I was just OK—say, top 20%—but not as intellectually gifted as I suspected? That wouldn’t be all that big a disappointment, but at the same time, I wanted to know. So finally I did it—and found out that I wasn’t in the top 2% at all; I was in the top 1%—at least allowing, as always, the vagarities of IQ tests and, for that matter, the entire concept of innate intelligence.
But the notion of inherent intelligence levels has never been a mystery or question to me. At some level I always knew it was there, no matter how much I denied it. In a different childhood, one spent out of the soul-deadening and spirit-crushing trench of an American public school, I might not have found it necessary to suppress such a valuable attribute. Instead of slinking around and hiding, I might have grasped the opportunity to develop freely, without apology or the furtiveness that characterized my life up to age 18. On the other hand—here I go with the devil’s advocate stuff again—I wound up developing my mind anyway, but within a private and almost secretive surrounding. During those many happy hours spent with music and books, at home in my room, safely away from the scary jocks and sneering cheerleaders and sinister tough kids, I was giving myself an eclectic but valuable education. It was more like the nature of a garden going wild rather than something deliberately cultivated, but it was growth nonetheless. So it worked out in its own way, as things have a tendency to do.
Still: my heart goes out to those smart school kids who have come to the same conclusion I did, that it’s dangerous to be a bright student in American elementary and secondary schools. They learn to conceal and slip through unnoticed, just as I did. But I had a chance to blossom later on. That’s no guarantee that they will—and we may well wind up losing part of a precious cultural resource. Throwing away riches is never a wise thing to do, but that’s what American culture tends to do with its emphasis on conformity, mediocrity, athleticism, and looks.
Yep: I’m a member of Mensa, up-to-date as of this morning with my renewal for the next three years paid up. I’m not in it for snob appeal or to feel superior. I’m in it because every time I say I’m a member of Mensa I salve an old wound that has never altogether healed. I spent my childhood being ashamed of being intellectually gifted. Maybe by going public, as it were, I can help some other kid avoid the same feeling of alienation and shame.