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B-5

“I’m in first grade,” I tell every single person I can find at my aunt and uncle’s rehearsal dinner in 1979, “and I’m only five.” Like a little robot whose dial is set on “EGO,” I stomp around the knees of every human I can find and repeat my line: “I’m in first grade, and I’m only five.” I make sure to pause after delivering the introductory fact, “I’m in first grade,” allowing my audience to form what will be a severely inadequate judgment, “and I’m only five.”

Months before, I’d been taken to the University of Memphis, along with my older sister, for an IQ test. This was the late seventies; IQ tests were cool. I scored 141, a fact that, to this day, I make sure that my sister, the Ph.D., who has a beautiful house and family and steady career and who scored a 140, remembers.

I need to make sure that every adult at that rehearsal dinner knows how smart I am. I’m positive that most of them don’t have a 141 IQ, which fact I take to mean that not only am I in first grade and only five, but also that I’m in first grade and only five and smarter than you. Worship me.

The rehearsal dinner ends with five-year-old, first-grade me at a table surrounded by adults who, I’m sure, are impressed with me. “B-5,” I’m telling them; “I-18”; “O-62.” I’m running a bingo game, and I feel that I have found my calling.

Subsequent tests have revealed the inadequacy of IQ tests as a measure of intelligence, but I don’t need those results—I’ve lived through high school and 13 years of school after that, and I’d be the first to report that I’m no genius. What I would like to see, the test I wish I would have taken in first grade, is a personality test. I’m the same egomaniac now that I was then; it’s possible that my score on “Need for Affirmation” has shot off the charts.

A Bingo card is comprised of 24 “random” numbers and a star in the center, a square of five rows and columns. A single card has approximately a 2% chance of getting a bingo on or before the 20th number is called. The probabilities increase in a 50-card game. The numbers are complex, but nowhere near as staggering as the infinite variables at-hand when I’m playing for affirmation. The various ways in which I call out for affirmation are complex and deep, far beyond measuring.

As I’ve grown, I’ve turned from numbers to letters, from one species of character to another. I compose essays and do crosswords and play Scrabble. I love words. I would rather do the Saturday Times crossword than eat. Most days, I’d rather play Scrabble than have a heart-to-heart talk with you. I’m good with words—my slightly above-average (all my ego needs) facility with them makes me feel special. I don’t have looks or money or humor enough, but I have double entendre and anagram.

I’m slowly learning, and it’s hard, that words only mean so much, that there is something more fundamental, something before words (and by extension, affirmation) that I need. A few years ago, I wrote an essay in which Jesus encounters Pilate:

“Having heard that this man Jesus is a prophet, he asks, ‘What is truth?’ For a moment—ten seconds maybe—the prophet just poses, blinking, silent. This is the best answer, and Jesus can tell that Pilate, though irritated, finds this a bit sexy.”

The obvious and unsexy implications of quoting myself aside, what I’m reminded of concerning Jesus’ response is that, finally, Jesus is better with words than I am: "Quid est veritas?" (“What is truth?”) Pilate asks; “Est vir qui adest,” (“It is the man who is before you”) Jesus answers, not only the right response, but also a perfect anagram of Pilate’s question.

“Hey, Jesus, I’m in first grade, and I’m only five.” “Yes, child, and I am the one who was, who is, and who always will be before you. You need look nowhere else.” “Bingo.”

Posted by ghetto monk at December 14, 2005 01:21 PM | TrackBack