This is the first time I have shared a piece of email hot out of the InBox (with an anonymous author to boot) as forwarded by a longtime friend. But it made me grin enough to just jump in and re-post.
Reasons why to follow.
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Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009
The following was developed as a mental age assessment by the School of Psychiatry at Harvard University {yahsureyoubetcha she interjects}.
Take your time and see if you can read each line aloud without a mistake. The average person over 40 years of age doesn't get it! {beware of the early or frequent mis-use of exclamation points}...
Again, the instructions (in case your short term memory is already fading)..
To finish this test...
Now go back and read the third word in each line from the top down and once you get it, I'll bet you can't resist sharing it.
Subtext as I see it:
Our
ability to get the odd angles between the lines and adapt in advance on
the fly does decrease in proportion to the number of similar things we
have already perceived in our lifetimes. Which is exactly why this test
is a "gotcha" for those above a certain age/phase.
But from where I sit, this is only bad news until it is not. Sometimes our too-quick-to-recompile youngins' actually lose an adaptive contest to us who have been around the block often enough. I'll make it my job to find some examples and share them downstream.
Meanwhile, I choose to chuckle at being "caught" in a place where I could stand to be more flexible than I already imagine myself to be. It will help keep my brain on its toes, even if it remains a bit embarrassing.
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