IQ and the Navy Chief

I took an IQ test the other day. It was one of those your Facebook buddies post. It was only ten questions, all really easy. I’m apparently quite brilliant. Who knew? My IQ, according to this test, is 147.

So there are a few things I wonder about, like how do you get 147 out of 10 questions? Exactly what is the math involved in that calculation? Not to mention how can you measure IQ from only 10 questions? I seem to remember an IQ test I took years ago that included a lot of questions.

Heck, the military entrance test I took was hundreds of questions and took most of the day. That was in the days before desktop computers. You where picked up at oh-dark-thirty in the morning by your recruiter, those ever helpful individuals, and driven downtown to the federal building. You spent the next 6 hours at a desk in a big room with about 50 other people taking a series of tests. At the end of the tests you got to sit around in another room and wait for them to be scored and evaluated. Then you were called into an office with a representative of the military branch you were interested in, to talk about the results and your future.

This was 1977 and I was interested in the Navy. I wanted to work in military PR, or be an air traffic controller. I’m called into an office with a Chief that has so many service bars down his sleeve it looks like a piano keyboard. He’s an old guy (probably about my age now) who came up through the Navy when it was a man’s world. Women were for dating on shore, or nursing you when you were wounded. He was clearly “apprehensive” about letting women into any areas that were non-traditional. Can we say understatement? He was not a happy camper.

This guy makes me nervous! We sit down and he tells me I’ve scored a 96. That makes me even more nervous because I’m thinking this could be really good or really, really bad. I answered about 300 questions and if this score means I only got 96 right; I’m done. So, I ask him, “Is that good?” It about kills him to tell me its 96 out of a possible 100. I feel a lot better, but still nervous, because there are no positive vibes coming off this guy at all. I ask him what that score qualifies me to do, and he almost chokes when he tells me anything not combat related. He quickly suggests I look into becoming a boiler tech. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Someone had told me the week before that if you completely wrecked your test you could still be a boiler tech.

He mentioned that I had scored a 99 on vocabulary and that was the highest score he’d ever seen. He wanted to know how I did it. This question was more and accusation then real interest. What do you say to a question like that? I just looked him in the eye and said, “I read.” He seemed to think there was something fishy with that answer, but didn’t say anything about it.

I told him what I was interested in and he was very happy to inform me that there were only 500 positions in all of the military for the PR field and that they didn’t guarantee those positions. Once he established I was 5’ 4¼” tall he got a gleam in his eyes and told me I was too short to be an air traffic controller. To farther discourage me, he quickly pointed out that I would have to have a pelvic exam. I couldn’t help it, I laughed again. It was so clear he thought this information would completely discourage me. It was funny just hearing him say it, since it was so clear he wasn’t at all comfortable with the term. But, he was willing to bear anything to uphold the traditions of his Navy.

What the Chief couldn’t do to discourage me, a new boyfriend did. I ended up not going into the Navy or any other branch of the military. The boyfriend didn’t last for long, and I went on with my life. I still crack a smile when I think of the Chief.