Congratulations to The Dallas Mornings News writers Tod Robberson, William McKenzie, and Colleen McCain Nelson for winning a Pulitzer for editorial writing.
Colleen and I sat next to each other while working at the Arlington Star-Telegram in the late 1990s, and one day I pulled a fast one on her.
Colleen prided herself on being smart, and she was bragging one day about the high score she’d received on an online IQ test. I told her I was every bit as smart as she was and I volunteered to take the same online test to prove it.
The only problem was, I’m not that smart.
Toward the end of the test, I could tell I wasn’t going to do as well as Colleen had. But I figured out a way to improve my score dramatically. The last question on the test was, “How long did it take you to complete this test?”
I had spent more than 15 minutes answering questions, but I answered “3 minutes.”
Voila! I’d tricked the test and it gave me a genius score – higher even than Colleen’s score.
She was flabbergasted that I’d done so well. Her face got red. She couldn’t believe it. I rubbed my score in her face for a while, but eventually told her the truth.
I’ve never seen such a look of relief on one person’s face.
