The IQ Test

The IQ Test

After my crazy walk, I was on cloud nine. When Deb came in later that day, I told her to shut the door, “I have something to show you.” Then I stood up out of the wheelchair and walked to the door and back. I was still shaky and I could only do it for a short trip, but I was getting better. I think she cried, but after I sat down and caught my breath, she asked me to do it again so she could take a video of me walking.

As always, my excitement in rehab was always short lived. Speech therapy, need I say more. I don’t know if I have mentioned this before, but I really disliked speech therapy. Actually, disliked is not a strong enough word, loathed, despised, extreme hatred, to name only a few of the feelings I had towards speech therapy. It took all I had to try to stay somewhat polite to my therapist, or should I call her dictator, nazi, prison guard. 

The next day I had speech first thing in the morning. I was dreading it. Mom looked at me with a smile and told me to be nice! My response was, “No promises.” When I got to speech, I looked at my therapist and said, “I walked yesterday!” She just took a big three ring binder off the shelf and said, “That’s what I heard.” She opened it to more math problems and pushed it toward me. I looked at it and said, “You know, my kids gave me an iPad to use, and it has a calculator on it, and I have been using it; I will be able to do my grades with it.”

She responded, “I don’t care; you need to do it without a calculator.”

“Why,” I said. “I used a calculator before my stroke to do my grades. I don’t see why I can’t use one now. I’m trying to solve problems here so I’m ready to go back into my classroom. I know how to work on a computer for my grades. Don’t you think we should work on something else,” I asked. 

“No, no short cuts,” she answered.

I just looked at her and said, “Let me tell you a story.  When I was in the fifth grade we had moved to a new school; even though my grades were good, my reading was not. They didn’t know how to help me, so they brought in a specialist to test me. She was young, pretty and very funny. She made the test fun. After I proved I could solve puzzles and recreate block shapes, she started reading me a test. This was fun, I never had anyone read me a test before. The rules were simple, she would read me a question and if I answered it correctly, we would move on to a harder question. If I missed the question we would go back to a simpler question and if I missed three in a row the test would be done. I must say I remember this as being very fun, so after an hour and a half she looked at me and asked how do you know these questions I have high schoolers and adults that haven’t got his far on the test. My answer was that I listen to my mom, dad and brother, they are smart.  The test didn’t last much longer but she was very happy with my results. I liked her she was fun. A few weeks later I got called out of class right before recess for more testing. I was excited to see that pretty gal again, but this time it was a big sweaty, bald guy. He looked unhappy to be there and explained to me that the results of my earlier test were inconclusive, so we needed to do it again. He of course was not funny or pretty; he also smelled funny. He also made another big mistake, the rooms that I was being tested in had a big window looking out at the playground where my friends were enjoying recess. We got going on the questions and I answered a couple of them when I said, I just took this test a few weeks ago, he said yes and you’re going to take it again.  I looked out the window at my friend’s playing and he asked another question I answered it wrong; he asked me another question I answered it wrong; he looked at me grouchily and asked me another question, you guessed it. Wrong, I got up to walk out, and he yelled at me to set down and I responded no, I missed three in a row, the test is over, that’s the rules. He looked at me; his sweaty head was turning red and said fine, get out!  And I got to go to recess.”  I looked at my therapist and she was not impressed.

She said, “Well, that’s a terrible story. I don’t think I would have liked you when you were young.”

“Ok,” she said, “let’s try something different. She took me to a table and laid out some blocks, then showed me a picture and told me to make them look like the picture. The first few were easy but then they started to get hard. I struggled to grab the puzzle pieces, and my mind had a hard time making the shapes, which was very frustrating because that had always been a strength of mine. But at least it wasn’t math. When she thought I had struggled enough, she pushed the math problems at me again, I looked down at the math questions and said, “No, I think we are done for today.” I grabbed my wheels on my wheelchair and rolled out. The look on her face was priceless!