PMSAT’s March 13, 2008
My son is a junior in high school and preparing to take his SAT’s, a standardized test in preparation for applying to colleges in the coming year. Yesterday I bought him a study guide, foolishly thinking that perhaps he might be interested in doing whatever he could to improve his score. I purposely chose the book that was most visually appealing (almost comic-book like), thinking it might draw him in, and that claimed to “save time for those busy students”. He’s busy alright. Do you know how long it takes to level up in Call of Duty 4? (puhleeez…) I poured over the book (mainly to see if I could still answer any of the questions…hoping I wasn’t as dumb as the perpetual look on my son’s face would indicate) and was personally impressed with the number of helpful tips it had to offer. There were pages of study questions and practice tests, all to insure the student’s preparedness.
I could have used a handbook like that these past few years. A middle-age preparatory guide. At this point, I’d take a cheat sheet. My Peri-Menopausal Stage Aptitude Test would have posed these sample questions:
1. John and Mary get a divorce. John immediately remarries Susie who is 1/2 the age of Mary. If Mary was 1/2 the age of John’s first wife, Betty, who was the same age as John, how long had Susie been sleeping with John?
2. Quite often in the middle of the night, Wanda would find herself ________ and in need of a shower, though her poor _____ made it difficult to find the knob.
a. insane……cellulite
b. aging……fibromyalgia
c. drenched…….eyesight
d. fatter…..hammertoe
3. Shirley has decided to launch a new business after 16 years as a stay at home mom, proving that middle-aged women can be:
a. fatuous
b. skookum tumtum
c. gnarly
d. all of the above
Well…..the fact is I’ll be winging it on my middle-aged aptitude test. Scores be damned, I’ll do the best I can and hope that in the end, rather than being accepted by the college of my choice, I’ll finally accept myself.
