The great Gordon Lightfoot turned 83 today! Roughly the same age as the Wechsler IQ scales, especially the beloved ancient WBI. Which is fitting since it was the Wechsler scales that taught me who this Canadian treasure is. One should never discuss items on IQ tests but this item is no longer used, and was only ever used in Canada…
Immediately after taking the WISC-R at age 12, I became obsessed with owning these tests. But I was just a 12-year-old kid, and even if I had the huge amount of money needed to buy it, I didn’t have a graduate degree in psychology so it couldn’t be sold to me.
So I went to a payphone and just started phoning every psychologist, pretending to be a woman (I was too young to pretend to be a man) telling them they were under inspection to make sure they were following proper testing protocol and to pretend I was a patient they were administering the test to (so I could make sure they were doing it right). These poor psychologists would spend an hour on the phone administering the test to me in as I rapidly wrote down each item.
The problem was, my general knowledge has always been way below my overall IQ (I scored at the 75th percentile at age 12 among 12-year-olds when officially tested), but now I was pretending to be a grown-ass woman taking the ADULT Wechsler Information subtest. I flew through the first few questions without any difficulty, but then she asks “Who is Gordon Lightfoot?”
“A lumberjack,” I stupidly replied. And that was the beginning of my downward spiral on the WAIS-R Information subtest (I got a scaled score of 7 which was probably high for a 12-year-old but below average for the adult I was pretending to be). The country’s psychometric field is run by dimwits the psychologist must have thought.
It turns out the actual question concerned a famous jazz musician (who I did know) but since they were administering the test in Canada, they arbitrarily substituted Gordon Lightfoot.
That night I asked my mom if she knew who Gordon Lightfoot was: “OF COURSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” she screamed.
A few years later I administered the entire WAIS-R to my 9th grade English teacher who I adored because she gave me the highest mark in the school’s history on my book report of George Orwell’s 1984 (despite me never reading the book). When I asked her “Who was Gordon Lightfoot?” her elderly smile lit up the room as she got out of the chair and danced, saying “Gordon Lightfoot is the most wonderful Canadian folk singer!” It was great to see that a woman with such a high opinion of my book report score so high on the WAIS-R.
Sadly, in 2019 I met a super scrawny short guy who told me Lightfoot was a POS. Normally I have the highest respect for scrawny people, but this guy just looked like he had AIDS (no offense). Apparently he was working as a cook when Lightfoot ordered some food and as a huge fan, the restaurant at which he worked approached the singer and said “a member of our staff is such a huge fan of yours and he would just be so honored to meet you” and outwalked this lowly young cook who looked like he had AIDS.
Apparently Lightfoot was nonplused and a bit annoyed, so the cook was obviously devastated. But then I’d be annoyed too if I were just trying to enjoy dinner and I was introduced to some freak whose only relevance was that he was a fan of my music, like everyone else in Canada!
And what great music it is!
Pumpkin Person 
who the fuck is gordon fake native american surname?
oh!
i see.
this is canadian shit.
sad.
Youre one of the anti vax idiots aren’t you.
please post under a pumpkin face.
but yes!
i think ONLY the vulnerable should be vaxed…or in my case, if your black husband tells you to.
i AM against vaxing chirren. 100%. and i think it’s very very odd that any would advocate it…
unless they have autism or they’re evil.
But kids can spread it to the vulnerable, even if the vulnerable are vaxed because breakthrough cases.
Also, we can’t predict who’s vulnerable with much certainty. There are healthy 30-year olds who get the virus and can’t breath
actually i heard a doctor say that even when you don’t die from it it can wreck you. so i just wanted not to worry about it.
but the vaxed are no less likely to spread it peepee. look it up.
but that’s true of the flu too and only old people are advised to get a flu vaccine every year. i’ve had pneumonia. it can kill you at any age. and the flu is often the anteroom to bacterial pneumonia.
every medical intervention has side effects pill.
the probability of life threatening side effects for chirren and many others is greater from the vax than from covid.
It was approved by the FDA. The side effects are a tiny probability compared to the very high probability of getting covid. You are stupid.
but the very high probability of getting covid = very low probability of serious “side effects”…and much greater resistance after recovery.
why does peepee insist on arguing when she doesn’t have a y chromosome?
if COVID were the plague or airborne AIDS…
TOTALLY different!
who the fuck is gordon fake native american surname?
Only the greatest artist in the history of folk music. The man who wrote these lyrics:
If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
‘Bout a ghost from a wishing well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I am a ghost, you can’t see
If I could read your mind, love
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a paperback novel
The kind the drugstore sells
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won’t read that book again
Because the ending’s just too hard to take
I’d walk away like a movie star
Who gets burned in a three way script
Enter number two, a movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me
But for now, love, let’s be real
I never thought I could act this way
And I’ve got to say that I just don’t get it
I don’t know where we went wrong
But the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back
NOW YOU TELL ME MY SISTA! WHAT COULD BE BETTER THAN THAT?
Only the greatest artist in the history of folk music
even greater than tracy lesnegress?
come on.
it’s not bob dylan.
there’s someone you’re forgetting.
hint: he died in an insane asylum in his 50s from a genetic disease of the brain.
Puppy took the test at 12 years old and his social IQ stayed the same for the rest of his life as when he was in that phone booth lol.
I have to admit pill, I had a friend I hadn’t seen since we were 13 and when we reunited as seniors in high school, he was stunned that I had changed so little from when when we were kids. He even found it weird that I was driving a car because I still acted exactly as I had when were kids (still interested in horror films; still wanting to test him). So there is a kind of arrested development that occurs in some child prodigies.
arrested development?
happened when I was 16
To be honest cat, you’re development is not just arrested, it seems to be regressing. It’s almost like you have multiple personalities. You have rare moments where you’re extremely articulate and sound highly intelligent, but then other times, you write like a six-year-old and I wonder how you ever scored 120+ the Wechsler.
I am bipolar.
I can be lucid or near catatonic.
sometimes it is an effort to word things out.
energy levels just fluctuate in different areas.
I can’t maintain thoughts when in that state.
drained*
Puppy said Anime could be a college graduate LOL.
No I said his most recent WAIS IQ was average for a college grad. But because of mental illness & fatigue I can’t see him getting through college.
Can you see me getting through college?
Yes
Lewis Terman said in his In Defense of IQ Testing that someone with an IQ of 150 could, if he [sic andronormative pronoun] half-tries, graduate from college with Phi Beta Kappa honors at age 20. By that metric, I’m two years and a fraternity behind the curve even before accounting for the fact that I believe Terman was talking about Stanford-Binet IQs, and isn’t that a childhood test for which IQ would regress to the mean in adulthood?
You scored 130+ and are 30+ yet you haven’t committed to memory when to use your vs. you’re. I respect your mathematical skills, though, and you’ve managed to become an engaging writer even without having mastered basic rules of your native language. Paradox Person!
Cat, you’re a creative thinker, but you ramble sometimes. My verbal comprehension is about as good as it gets, but some things you write are real head-scratchers. I felt the same thing when I was in an elective feminist course and my classmates went on jargon-laden soliloquies. Read the crowd, amigo!
“your vs. you’re”
I’ve known the difference for decades but often mess that up when I’m typing fast & don’t proof read. Might be an executive function error.
Not my native language
Huh? Are you a Francophone from Quebec?
No, but I have a diverse background.
Illuminaticat is literally one of the 5 most interesting commenters I’ve ever come across on the Internet. This includes commenters across multiple platforms, blogs, and message boards. Because I simply cannot tell if this guy is just putting on or if he is for real. Really fascinating.
He’s for real
I’m not joking, if you talk to puppy in real life its like talking to a pre-pubescent child!
on january 20, 2022, jeffrey epstein will turn 69.
You’ve spoken to PP face to face?
No he’s just speculating
I’m not speculating. I’ve read your blog for 5 years.
If it’s so childlike, why would you read it for 5 years?
If you could contrive such a dastardly plot before most of us have pubic hair you definitely have a future in security penetration testing LMFAO
Pretending to be an adult on the phone, I guess you were Home Alone 🙂
I wonder what heartwarming movie about a kid your next anecdote will resemble!
You just gave everyone a simple way to leak IQ-test questions though, doesn’t seem very responsible.
I used to pretend to be an adult on the phone all the time when I was a kid. Home Alone didn’t invent that & all I remember about that movie is Roger Ebert having the courage to defiantly give it two thumbs down and keep them down as a crowd of the film’s fans booed.
I guess disclosing that anecdote was not the most responsible thing but today there are so much easier ways to get access to test content that my method seemed quaint by modern standards.
Oh I’m not suggesting you copied stuff from movies if that’s how it came across, your anecdotes just seem quaint and suitable for that type of kid’s movie, beginning with the scene of the Indian lady giving you that IQ test and you studying Oprah on TV and drawing conclusions about brain size. Maybe you spot your hero in the end like in “Bend it like Beckham”.
I’m imagining the scene were you get sent to juvenile detention for stealing WAIS and the other kids, typical ruffians, ask you what you’re in for 🙂
“What are you in for poindexter, crossing the street without looking?”
“Actually I stole top secret data worth millions from a big corporation in a daring heist.”
I think we’ll have to change that Lightfoot guy to Elvis or someone for international audiences though 🙂
Any good anecdotes about pets/animals?
A Roger Ebert mention, yes! I love him and was so sad when he passed away. I’m sure you know he went on a date with your deity!
Yes! The advice he gave her helped make her a billionaire:
no saint is greater than jesus peepee.
It’s kind of funny that the Weavers and Woody Guthrie come up last in this alphabetical listing, as they’re probably two of the most important artists in the history of the contemporary folk movement in this country. Guthrie wrote thousands of songs in his lifetime, many of which are still being found. Among them were love songs, songs of praise, silly children’s songs, songs about nature, and topical protest songs. If any songwriter could be called “prolific” or “influential,” those terms would certainly apply to Woody Guthrie.
no saint is greater than jesus
WTF?
his son apparently didn’t inherit the disease.
Normally I have the highest respect for scrawny people
Gordon Lightfoot is wonderful. You should do an estimate of Joni Mitchell…
You should apply to Goldman Sachs and demand a place on the board.
I probably will now that you mention it.