Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties (18 page)
Read Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties Online
Authors: Patricia Marx
Tags: #Humour, #Essays
ANSWER:
It headed south!
The drop was insignificant, akin to the water weight a dieter loses in the first few days of eating no carbs. Still, that’s not what you want to hear after you’ve spent days and days trying to tune up your thinking machine. Or perhaps it is. If my IQ had gone up a few points, which would have had marginal to no effect on my mental capacities, would I have felt compelled to devote my life to green tea, jumping jacks, Sanskrit, and ukulele lessons? Yes. It’s kind of a relief to be free of that. That might be the smartest thought I ever had.
On my way home from dinner that night, I thought about how, in the old days, kings and emperors would send people on missions to find the fountain of youth, the elixir of life. These attendants would travel thousands of miles and come back empty-handed. I accomplished the same in four months without picking up a tropical disease.
Then I realized I lost my hat. It was the second hat
I’d lost that day. Two hats! It could have been worse. At least I still had my head.
“The delta in your cognitive abilities cannot be properly assessed because there are too many independent variables that are not controlled in this experiment. For example if I were to say you seem smarter to me it could just be that in the past year I have gotten stupider. Proper protocols for this project would have required cryogenically storing all your friends for the year while you did your mishuganah cognitive enhancers. Then defrost us and ask us our views.”
George Hornig
“As your agent, I can’t comment—what if I was funnier?”
Esther Newberg
“I would say that you probably can’t divide up a check any faster than you ever could.”
Sybil Sage
“You smarter? That’s hilarious. Seriously, that better be hilarious.”
Mark Moffett
“The challenge of assessing the differential in your cognitive abilities 10 years ago vs. today is too daunting to me. Can you still conjugate the verb
amo
? If so, I can detect no decline. Likewise, if you are still able to differentiate ‘dumb stuff’ from ‘smart stuff’ (something I could never do), then your cognitive track is a flat horizontal line.”
Bob Kerrey
“Changes in your cognitive abilities? Mmmm… no. But then I didn’t know the colors of my wife’s and children’s eyes when they asked me ten years ago. From now on I’ll pay attention.”
Kurt Andersen
“Have I noticed any particular uptick in your intelligence from all of your meditation, Lumosity, etc.? The answer is ‘no.’ Moreover, I did notice when we were having lunch in New York that you were not capable of explaining Lumosity to me in a way that made me understand what Lumosity is, but that may reflect more on me than you. I am clearly less luminous than you.”
Victoria Rostow
“I have definitely detected, since you’ve started the brain training, that you send many more mass emails.”
Lynn Grossman
“You’re exactly the same as you were a year ago, although you seem to be more concerned about what I think of your brain than you used to be.”
Steve Radlauer
“A mutual friend tells me you have been making a lot of baskets lately, and braiding leather. What’s with that?”
Melinda Davis
“I think that you have become funnier. Not sure about the other stuff.”
Julie Saul
“Your brain seems the same in truth.”
Kent Sepkowitz
“There are sparks coming from the top of your head. It’s all right with me if it’s all right with you.”
Melinda Wingate
“Please send the Cherokee for ‘Wish you were here’ (an expression the Cherokees probably never used).”
Lorrie Moore
“This is just an impression, and please ignore if there’s better data—but I feel that since you started this your breasts have gotten really perky.”
Philip Weiss
“Hey, how tall are you anyway? I mean, really?”
Gordon Lish
“Forget memory—you get to my age it’s all about teeth or feet.”
Jennifer Rogers
I feel no end of gratitude to Amanda Brainerd, Melissa Bank, Joan Hornig, George Hornig, Zachariah Hughes, Julie Klam, Cynthia Kling, Susan Lehman, Gerry Ohrstrom, Alexandra Penney, Sarah Stuart, Lucy Teitler, Philip Weiss, and Meg Wolitzer, who contributed ideas and insights. Their brilliances are so formidable I must wear SPF 50 just to talk to any of them on the phone.
Thank you, too, to the brains who study brains: Sherrie All, Shelli Kesler, Faraz Farzin, Alvaro Fernandez, Adam Gazzaley, Kenneth Kosik, Jennifer Medina, Michael Merzenich, Louisa Parks, and Mika Pritchard-Berman. I appreciate the generous time they provided, measuring and explaining.
Six people at Twelve were particularly smart and supportive: S. B. Kleinman, Libby Burton, Elizabeth Kulhanek, Brian McLendon, Mari C. Okuda, and
Paul Samuelson. Many thanks also to the grand and central Jamie Raab at Grand Central.
Of course, my friend and agent, the sage Esther Newberg, gets her own paragraph (and deserves several volumes).
Then there are Janice Marx, Richard Marx, and Sarah Marx, my mother, brother, and sister, respectively, who graciously put up with months and months of telephone calls that went like this: Me—“I can’t talk now, I’m working on my book. Bye.”
To Paul Roossin, whose neural pathways are too numerous to fathom and whose kindness quarks are even more invaluable, I award a Nobel Prize in Everythingology.
After writing this book, Patty Marx got so smart that she changed her name to Patricia Marx.
BOUT TWELVE
TWELVE was established in August 2005 with the objective of publishing no more than twelve books each year. We strive to publish the singular book, by authors who have a unique perspective and compelling authority. Works that explain our culture; that illuminate, inspire, provoke, and entertain. We seek to establish communities of conversation surrounding our books. Talented authors deserve attention not only from publishers, but from readers as well. To sell the book is only the beginning of our mission. To build avid audiences of readers who are enriched by these works—that is our ultimate purpose.
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Copyright © 2015 by Patricia Marx
Cover design and illustration by Janet Hansen
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: July 2015
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Bottom graph on
here
courtesy of Lumosity.
ISBN 978-1-4555-5494-2
E3
