Gulf Coast Mensa: Genius or Homeless?

This Memorial Day weekend, I:

1. Had a 60-year-old bald man stick his hand down the back of my pants in a room filled with people while Toy Story was playing on a drop-down screen,
2. Partook of an endless supply of liquor and beer, and
3. Witnessed an extramarital affair take place between a greasy-haired lawyer and my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, who had her 9-year-old son with her,

Notwithstanding these interesting occurences, I had one of the most extraordinarily dull times I've had in a while. How can that be possible, you ask? Mensa: It's the new beige.

Q-Tip whisked me away to the sweltering smog of exotic Houston, Texas, where I attended my first Mensa Regional Gathering: SynRG - To Infinity and Beyond. QT had told me a lot about Mensa, having been a member for several years and attending innumerable regional gatherings all over the country. Endless drinks and food, interesting speakers, fun games and shenanigans of all varieties, and of course: a room teeming with geniuses! Mensa is a club whose only membership requirement is an intelligence quotient in the top 2% of test-takers. I am not a member, but an Intellectual Plebe may be granted attendance when invited by a member who is currently leasing space inside her vagina. He gets in, I get in, so to speak.

What I didn't know about Gulf Coast Mensa, however, is that its demographics are mainly middle-aged, married people with children. And they bring their children with them. I learned this information about an hour outside of Houston from QT's Mensa friend who incidentally turned out to be one of the only three people at the conference over the age of 12 and under the age of 35. The other two were QT and I.

It turns out that what one mostly does at Mensa is play board games, but not board games like we the Nonintelligentisa play. Oh, no, these are smart people board games; they require deep thought, careful moves, complex reasoning, intricate strategy, and about 15 minutes per move. I managed to visit the frozen margarita machine three times during one round of Blokus (pronounced Block-us), a game which is like watching paint dry, waiting for it to age and flake off the wall, and then eating the paint chips. Most of the time, there is nothing to do but drink and play these kinds of games while you learn that no amount of drinking can make them fun.

What disappointed me most is that the majority of the people there seemed no more intelligent than any of the glassy-eyed suburbanites you encounter every day. In fact, I couldn't tell the difference most of the time. A couple of them barely spoke at all and looked as though they had wandered in off Highway 290 to take a break from panhandling. They smelled bizarre and stared at me creepily until I had to sneak out of the room. T told me he thought Mensa was a scam; as a dues-paying organization, it has a vested interest in getting more members and perhaps scores some of the qualifying exams, shall we say, sympathetically. Who knows? Maybe they were all very smart, but I couldn't manage to draw more than one person into an intellectually stimulating conversation, something I miss quite a bit in the day-to-day of corporate America and was eagerly anticipating. It was like going to an orgy and being unable to find an erection anywhere in the group, or like going to church with a congregation of atheists. And you know how much I hate flaccid Unitarians.

On the upside: free booze and food, QT paid for the hotel room, and there were some great puns. Mensans love their word play! The best part of the trip was the drive home, holding hands with a cute boy and trying to decide which country we're going to live in. I'll keep you posted. Get it? Posted? Like a blog post? Ha HA! If I keep this up, I'll be in the Club in no time!

It's good to be back in the blogosphere. For future reference, Q-Tip is so monikered because he is very white, very thin, and has a big fuzzy head. Also, I love to stick him in my ear.

P's.