Why MENSA isn’t holding a spot open for me

I went and tried out for Jeopardy last night.

I actually was not aware that they were even holding tryouts where I live until my husband happened to mention it and told me he thought I should go and try out.

We will sometimes play along at home and more often than not I do pretty well on knowing the answers (thank you higher education). Playing at home is alot more relaxed and when the pressure is on and something really big is riding on my knowing some random bit of trivia–well the odds are good that I will blow it.

I left work early to go stand outside in line for almost 2 hours to make sure that I got a spot with all the other Jeopardy Hopefulls. Fortunately it was a beautiful day (almost the end of October and it was in the mid-70’s). Also fortunate for me, I ended up standing next to a gentleman who although having a PhD in Engineering, was actually fun to talk to (sorry to any Engineers who read this and may be offended…its just that most engineer’s that I have known tend to be…somewhat socially retarded. Seems to come with the field).

Once the auditions officially ‘opened’ at 5pm, things went pretty quickly. I moved up in line and got to the room where they were handing out the pre-determining test. 10 questions, 5 minute time limit.

Immediately I could answer seven of the ten questions (”The occipital is one of 206 in the human body” What is a bone? Ding ding ding I think we have a winner). The other three questions that I couldn’t think of the answers for didn’t fare so well and I left them blank. Unfortunately, by leaving the three questions blank, I nixed any chance of being invited back for the really ‘real’ Jeopardy audition being held the next day.

Of course, on the walk back to where I had parked my car, I could immediately come up with the answer to one of the three questions I couldn’t think of–the question was “This rhyme form is named after a town in Ireland”–What is a Limerick?!!! Where was that answer hiding in my grey matter only 5 minutes previously?

Its nice to know that I won’t have to worry about about any invitations from MENSA cluttering up my mailbox in the near future.