Prologue

Want to know how stupid I used to be? Before writing this book, I took an online IQ test consisting of twenty-one questions. “Which one of the five is least like the others?” asked the opener. The choices were dog, mouse, lion, snake, and elephant. Another item presented this critical state of affairs: “Mary, who is sixteen years old, is four times as old as her brother. How old will Mary be when she is twice as old as her brother? (a) 20 (b) 24 (c) 25 (d) 28.” Then there were—as there invariably are—numerical sequences, such as this one that requires you to fill in the missing number: “8, 27, ?, 125, 216”—and a genealogical question about people who patently changed their names at Ellis Island (“If all Bloops are Razzies and all Razzies are Lazzies, then all Bloops are definitely Lazzies—true or false?”). One last example: “Which of the figures below the line of drawings best completes the series?”

I knew that IQ tests online have been reported to yield generously higher scores than the professional models (by twenty-eight points, reckons one study), but even so, I thought, aren’t these questions suspiciously manageable? (The answers are b, 64, true, and e). Or maybe my mother was right and I’m brilliant after all, I concluded as I cockily clicked to learn the verdict… which was… get ready: “You have an IQ of seventy-four.” Seventy-four! This is a score that falls into the category described as “low intelligence.” With a score like this, who would have predicted I’d be able to put on my socks unassisted? Apparently the test was timed, a detail I did not grasp when I periodically interrupted my testing to, oh, have lunch and do a few errands, such as voting for the next mayor of New York. This is not an excuse. Any idiot who cannot read the directions deserves an IQ that is a few points shy of “mentally inadequate.” Morally I’m not so adequate, either, but that’s another book (Let’s Be Less Debauched).

I don’t even listen to directions when I ask for them—and I ask for them all the time because honestly, in order for me to figure out which way is west, I must place a mental map of the United States in my noggin and then think, “California is left and California is west so ipso facto…” As soon as whomever I’ve accosted for navigational help starts up with “After you go under the underpass, take a left but not a sharp left, and keep going straight until you come to a building with an awning…” my mind is off in another world, mulling over what I should have for lunch because, let’s face it, the real reason I ask directions is to be reassured that it’s possible to get there and that someone exists who knows how.

Yet here I am, about to give you a few pointers on how to read this book. (Hey, if you want to be the author instead of me, who’s stopping you from writing your own book?) First of all, please know that this is not one of those books like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or How to Install a Small to Mid Size Solar & Wind Power Generation System, in which chronology matters. In these pages you will find a higgledy-piggledy assortment of highfalutin science, lowfalutin science, tests to find out just how stupid you are, exercises designed to make you smarter, games to amuse you, games to amuse me, drawings of the contents of my skull as rendered by someone (me) who can’t draw, and accounts of me doing everything from learning Cherokee to zapping electricity into my head, all in an attempt to jump off the cognitive escalator heading downward to you-know-where. Both before and after my self-improvement regimen, I underwent MRI scanning of my brain and took a battery of IQ tests—real ones administered by a psychologist (who read the directions aloud to me). If you want to know the results right now, turn to the last chapter. (Don’t tell my publisher I told you this. Let’s keep it between the two of us.)

This book, then, is not only a primer of neuroscience (a sub-primer, I admit), a memoir, a self-help guide, a humor book, and a collection of brainteasers and quizzes, but also a suspense tale. If you are looking for a maritime history or picaresque novel, please go elsewhere.