Brokeback Book

In Which I Break the Spine of My Paperback Lesson Book By Throwing It Across the Room.

After you smash your fourth telephone, your spouse is likely to encourage you to conquer the problem and mature into an even-tempered individual. For the interest of kindred destructive souls, let me tell you that the most difficult part lies halfway between those two poles — when you're standing in the middle of a room, absolutely blind with rage, while every time you grab something to smash it into a billion pieces you hear this little voice that says, "You can't break that. It's expensive."

Having said that, I'll continue on to the good news: I'm consistently getting perfect scores on individual logic games, the Satanic little Mensa-problems that had provoked me to consider burning down my house. I need to complete a series of four inside 35 minutes and I'm not close to that yet, but at least I've figured out how to do them.

What drove me nuts wasn't an inability to get the answers right; I couldn't do the problems at all. I had no idea what to do and I froze. I just sat there, staring at the words, with absolutely no clue how to put them together into a sketch that would lead me to the answer. Sudoku doesn't bother me even when I get stuck for an hour because I know what I'm looking for, even if I don't see it. These damned problems, I had no clue how to even begin. I just sat there holding a pencil for no reason at all.

Those days are past. Now I spend an hour slugging through each problem and find success. It ain't glamorous but it feels better, and if I can whittle my time down by 85% then I'll have made useful headway. My next practice test is on Sunday and although I doubt my advances will translate into higher scores this quickly, we'll see.