The intelligent moron.

The first IQ test I took was in 1996. I was only nine years old back then. I remember it like it was yesterday -- about 120 of us, all third-graders, gathered in the school hall for our first public exam. 1996 -- the first year of the implementation of Penilaian Tahap Satu (PTS), an IQ test for elementary school students. Those who score above the level set by the ministry would get an offer to skip fourth grade the following year and enrol as a fifth-grader instead.

Guinea pigs of the national education system. That's what we were. The first batch of students subjected to what the government calls "a method to identify the really smart kids and let them have the choice to be a step ahead of the rest". My parents thought I'd score well enough to get the offer. They were wrong. No one in my school scored within the required range. For an "elite" institution that requires preschoolers to pass an entrance exam in order to be accepted, I imagined it was a disappointment to the faculty. Things sometimes don't go the way you want it to go. C'est la vie.

I didn't try too hard in that exam. The questions were about things that were nowhere to be found in the textbooks. It felt more like a series of puzzles that were so much fun to solve, because it was so challenging -- and I didn't care if I passed or failed, much to my parents' displeasure. Talk about having typical Asian parents. I later learned from my father that he too had skipped grades when he was younger. The headmaster pulled him out of the first-grade class he was in because he was "so much smarter" than the rest of them. He had only been there for a week before he joined the second-graders. "All of you are smart," he used to say to my siblings and I. "It's in the genes."

So the hypothesis proposed by my father is this: Intelligence is hereditary. Is he right or is he crazy?

And then, there was this feature article on Reader's Digest, some time in the 1990s. It was about Mensa and the world's geniuses. A few pages were dedicated to a sample IQ test used by the organization. Years later, I found a similar test on the Mensa website. Online social networking had me taking more and more of these "Fun IQ Tests" as well as the serious ones, and the results? I have to say, a hunch tells me they could be accurate.

My IQ, according to these tests I've taken, can be anywhere in the mid or high 130s, with 140 being considered as genius. The Stanford-Binet scale classifies that as "very superior intelligence". I have a very high likelihood of passing the actual Mensa test. Something to be proud of? I don't know.

Truth is, despite that knowledge, I feel like a total idiot -- because that's what I am. IQ scores mean nothing if you still feel inadequate at the end of the day. They mean nothing if despite all that innate cognitive ability, you are still found wanting by those around you -- and I am no stranger to being found wanting.

You're very smart. You're not stupid. You freak me out with how quickly you learn things and come up with shortcuts that I never knew could work. So why am I seeing this? What's going on?

Almost a genius, and still not fulfilling expectations. Images would pop up in my head -- of Sufiah Yusof, Ariff Alfian, Christina Perri and my best friend. Intelligence is a curse. A curse, because the society pushes you to achieve what it considers as perfection. You are not allowed to be real, while the rest of the world can get away with anything. Crazy, and yet I'm the one with a referral to a shrink. Christina Perri's name wasn't a random mention, by the way.

No one is perfect. Even heroes have the right to bleed.

Thank you, Five for Fighting, for being so inspiring.