the average IQ in the U.S. is 98

[moriah]

83. One of my ex's was horribly embarrassed to admit he tested at 187.

He also narrowly missed a diagnosis of autism as a child, because he didn't start talking to people until he was five. They knew he could talk when they heard him repeating conversations he heard around him at night. (Now, that's known as a classic symptom in verbal autistics -- echolalia. But back then, verbal kids were *rarely* diagnosed as being on the spectrum.)

He said he remembers his grandfather saying "We know you can talk, so stop pretending." He said to him it wasn't that he was pretending he couldn't talk -- just that no one was interesting enough to talk to, so he didn't bother. But he spoke his first words to an actual human being that day -- when he responded with "Yes, sir" to the gramps.

But yeah, when I asked him what his was, he didn't want to tell me. He was afraid I'd think he was lying or bragging. I'd already seen him breathing in books on quantum physics that blew my mind (I barely was able to wrap my head around "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters", which he recommended when I wanted to know about the books *he* was reading but the math made me cringe), though, so it was believable.

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Still didn't mean the man could find his way out of a wet paper bag, though. Went to help a friend with her car that had a dead battery, and when asked if he'd brought jumper cables, said "What for?" -- seriously. Could get lost in a town of 5000 people. Killed the Civic I let him keep within 3 months of us splitting up, despite me warning him it had an oil leak and if the oil light stayed on for more than a second when he started it to check and add oil, and to check the oil once a week anyway.

IQ doesn't mean all that much, except when it comes to actually being able to understand what the heck Stephen Hawking is talking about.