I don’t test well.
I kind of like tests. Especially ones that ask weird questions. Like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a standard personality test for the sane and slightly-less-so. Amongst its True/False gems are statements such as these:
I have diarrhea once a month or more.
My hands and feet are usually warm enough.
I would like to be a singer.
Evil spirits possess me at times.
At times I feel like swearing.
My soul sometimes leaves my body.
I am a good mixer.
I have not lived the right kind of life.
I am an important person.
Get yourself a guitar, a couple more of these and you’ve got yourself a career as a folk singer. (True to Statement 3!)
Me, I tend to lie on these kinds of tests; chalk it up to a deep-seeded paranoia about the men in dark rooms reading my results and assigning me my fate in a South African diamond mine. But I tried to be as honest as possible when taking the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, a test designed by Simon Baron-Cohen and others at the Cambridge Autism Research Centre to determine degree of autism in adults. I guess part of me sort of assumes that since Baron-Cohen is Sasha’s cousin, any minute now a gay Austrian fashionista or Eastern-bloc journalist will kick down the door and do something strange and kind of funny with his genitalia. Why this assuages my paranoia I have no idea; perhaps there’s a test for it. Perhaps it makes me feel like an important person.
Anyway I took the AQ and scored a 15. Which means I’m probably not autistic. Why don’t you take the test and let me know how you did — I’d love to find out what my autistic readership is.
Hell, I’d love to find out if I have a readership, or if it’s all the evil spirits swearing at me.
Nov. 2nd, 2009 7:47pm
