A.J. Jacobs Omnibus: The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, My Life as an Experiment

by A. J. Jacobs

  There are plenty of other joys available in the Mensa literature. Looking for typos, for one thing. That gives me a special immature thrill, as when I found this question on the Young Mensa Web site: “In what movie does Robbin Williams star as Mensan Adrian Cronauer?” Robbin Williams? Ha! Just one b, Einstein. And it’s Good Morning Vietnam. If I’m bored with that game, I can browse the Mensa catalogue, enjoying the Mensa T-shirts, Mensa baseball caps, and Mensa critter stuffed animals, which are supposed to look like Beanie Babies to everyone but Beanie Baby lawyers.

  But after a month of this, I start to feel cheap. I don’t feel like a real Mensa member. I feel I’m a loophole-loving fraud, that I’ll always have an asterisk next to my name in the great Mensa logbook, that I’m the Roger Maris of geniuses. I decide I should take the official Mensa test.

  I call up the Mensa organization and leave a message that I’m interested in knowing test times. If someone could call me back, I would be “much appreciative.” Much appreciative? Jesus. They should take my membership card away for crappy grammar. But who wouldn’t get nervous when calling the national headquarters?

  A few weeks later, I’m in a fluorescent-lit classroom in Chelsea awaiting the start of the official Mensa test. I’m sitting next to a guy who’s doing a series of elaborate neck stretches, like we’re about to engage in a vigorous rugby match. He’s neatly laid out four types of gum on his Formica desk: Juicy Fruit, Wrigley Spearmint, Big Red, and Eclipse. I hate this guy. I hope to God he’s not a genius.

  Our proctor—a large woman with an accent I couldn’t place—checked our photo IDs to make sure we didn’t hire a Stephen Hawking to take the test for us, then handed out an exam. It’s seven parts, each about five minutes. I feel okay about the first three parts because they consist of looking at a bunch of cute little pictures, sort of like a very sophisticated version of something you’d see on Sesame Street. Which one of these is like the others—King Tut, or the Easter Island statues? I find myself asking questions like, what’s the opposite of an Asian woman—Western woman, or an Asian man?

  I do okay on the vocabulary section—I know what “propinquity” means—but the math quizzes send my score scurrying south. I have the unpleasant realization that, despite my Britannica reading, I have forgotten how to do long division. The accented proctor tells us to put our pencils down when I have finished only a third of the math section.

  “That was way too easy,” I say, trying to break the iciness between me and the gum fetishist.

  “You found that easy?” he says.

  “No, just kidding. Why—did you?”

  “Well, I finished it without too much problem.” At this point, I would like to wring his well-stretched neck.

  I feel the Britannica failed me thus far, which is annoying. But finally, in section seven, the trusty EB gives me a little boost. This part tests the memory; the proctor reads us a story and then asks lots of questions about it. The story, luckily enough, is about Dionysian rituals and Dionysus being born from the thigh of Zeus. Since the EB loves its Greek history, I feel at home, and even know that Dionysus crawled out of Zeus’s leg. I rule section seven! I hand in my test and leave as my neighbor is still packing up his gum collection. I can’t tell whether I squeaked by or not.

  A few days later I get a call from a very nice but confused woman at Mensa HQ. She doesn’t understand why I took the test when I am already a member.

  “I just wanted to see if I was still smart,” I say.

  “I’m sending you your test fee back.”

  “But how’d I do on the test? Would I have gotten in on my Mensa test score?”

  She pauses. A very long and painful pause. “Be glad you got good SAT scores.”

  disease

  I think about disease a lot. Some people—namely my wife, friends, coworkers, family, and strangers I’ve just met—call me a hypochondriac. And I admit, I am careful. I avoid handshakes, preferring the head nod or, if necessary, the hug (backs of shirts seem far less likely to harbor germ colonies). I wash my hands till they’re chapped white. When I clink glasses for a toast, I make sure to clink the base of the glass so there’s no bacteria transfer. So yes, I’m a tad more observant than your average man.

  But I wouldn’t call myself a hypochondriac, for one reason: I actually do get sick at least twice a month. I swear. My immune system puts up about as much of a fight as your typical French general, such as Achille Bazaine, who surrendered 140,000 troops during the Franco-Prussian War, a strategy that got him sentenced to twenty years in French prison. Viruses, bacteria, funguses—my white blood cells welcome them all. One of my proudest accomplishments at Entertainment Weekly was to catch several colds from celebrities, including one from Ellen DeGeneres and another from Ernest Borgnine. I felt just as crappy, but at least I had celebrity germs, which had no doubt lived a glamorous life, probably doing some replicating at an awards ceremony or at Jack Nicholson’s pool.

  The Britannica isn’t necessarily very good for someone like me. Even before the disease section itself, every two or three pages I learned about some horrible new way to die. This set of books harbors enough illnesses to infest a million petri dishes.

  A couple of days ago, right on schedule, I got sick. I shuffled into the living room.

  “I’m sick again,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” said Julie.

  “Do I have a waxy pallor?”

  “What?”

  “A waxy pallor. Do I have one?”

  “Not more than normal.”

  “Good. Because that would mean I have aplastic anemia, which I really don’t need right now.”

  I was sort of joking. But at the same time, I have all these symptoms and diseases floating in my brain. And without really wanting to, every time I start to feel my health go south, I start on a mental checklist of the afflictions I’ve most recently read about.

  Is my urine black? No. Then I probably don’t have blackwater fever. So that’s a relief.

  My joints don’t ache, so I don’t have bursitis in any of its forms—tennis elbow, housemaid’s knee, soldier’s heel, or the dreaded weaver’s bottom.

  I look at my hands. My fingers aren’t involuntarily flexing in a slow and purposeless manner, therefore I probably am not suffering from athetosis. All right.

  I pinch my skin. It isn’t loose about my face, so I don’t have cutis laxa.

  I feel good about my chances with Chediak-Higashi syndrome, an immune disorder, since only two hundred cases have ever been reported.

  I also probably don’t have stinking smut, since it’s mostly confined to wheat and rye. But I do like it, because it’s the dirtiest-sounding disease thus far. It sounds like something Tony Soprano would say to one of his wayward captains: “Don’t you ever fuck with me again, you stinking smut!”

  I might, on the other hand, have Andersen’s disease, which causes lethargy. But I probably just have a cold.

  So this is the problem. I have all this new information to worry about—including some new ones in the disease entry itself—and yet I end up doing the same thing: eating some low-fat chicken soup, swallowing some zinc pills, and getting better two days later.

  Sometimes I try to look at the ocean of diseases out there in a positive light. I tell myself, sure, I get sick more often than I change my razor, but I should be proud of my immune system for all the evil organisms it does manage to keep out. At least it has denied entry to Malta fever, also known as brucellosis, which causes excessive sweating. Go, microphages! But then I start to focus on Malta fever, which does sound horrible, and I get all worried again. So many diseases, so few white blood cells.

  Disney, Walt

  Disney’s early collaborator was Ub Iwerks—perhaps the Britannica’s best name so far. Ub and Walt’s first creation was Oswald the Rabbit, but they had to abandon him in a copyright dispute. Another reminder of how different life could be: Rabbiteers, thousands of kids wearing rabbit hats, Oswald-the-rabbit politics.

&
nbsp; divorce

  The easiest divorce around: Pueblo Indian women leave their husband’s moccasins on the doorstep and—that’s it—they’re divorced. Simple as that. No lawyers, no fault, no socks, just shoes.

  dogs

  Dogs have a third eyelid to protect the eyeball from irritants, which seems like a damn good idea, and makes me quite jealous.

  Incidentally, my own eyes and their paltry two eyelids have become a subject of much concern among my family. My bloodshot left eye has faded to its traditional white, thanks no doubt to Julie’s carrots. But my mom is still worried about my extreme reading habits. She’s bought me a lamp called Happy Eyes. It’s an imposing device—ivory-colored, mammoth, with several moving parts, it looks like it would be right at home in an ob-gyn exam room. But I’ve come to love that lamp. Its rays are supposed to mimic those of the sun—hence the Happy Eyes label—though it reminds me more of the light I used to have over my pet turtle’s tank when I was a kid. Regardless, if I’m going to push my pupils to the limit, if I’m going to force them to run a marathon every day, the least I can do is give them the equivalent of a good pair of Nikes. I recommend Happy Eyes to anyone undertaking this task.

  While we’re on the subject, I’ve learned some other important reading techniques. First, the proper stance. Since the Britannica’s a cinder block of a book, you can’t treat it like your average Patricia Cornwell novel and hold it in the air. I tried, and my wrist paid the price. You need support. After much experimentation, I’ve found the best method is to lay the encyclopedia on your lap and grasp the edges with both hands, sort of like a steering wheel.

  As for the equipment, you’ll want to wear loose, comfortable clothing, nothing that will constrain your page-turning ability. An old college sweatshirt is fine. You should drink lots of fluids, load up on protein, and—I can’t stress this enough—make sure to take frequent breaks. You’ve got to give your brain a rest from the heavy lifting. I like to keep some Us Weeklys nearby, so that I can relax with an article discussing Julia Roberts’s midriff.

  I do most, maybe 90 percent, of my Britannica reading on a fluffy white couch in the extra bedroom of our apartment. But I’ve read it all over: in the bathroom, a car’s backseat, a car’s front seat, a movie theater, a restaurant, a bar, a lobby, an office, a doctor’s waiting room. I’ve got shoulder strain from lugging the thing around New York in a black bag.

  I’ve taken it on the Manhattan subway, and though the lighting isn’t ideal, I was pleasantly surprised that I got no strange looks from my fellow passengers. When there’s a homeless guy in the same car shouting that Pat Sajak is the second coming of Christ, a man reading an oversized book with some gold embossing on the spine isn’t going to attract a lot of attention. New York taxicabs, on the other hand, are much less hospitable. The jouncing over potholes will make you sick. I also strongly recommend against reading the encyclopedia on the Stairmaster. You can strain your mind or you can strain your body, but it’s not a good idea to do both. Plus, getting sweat drops on the Britannica is just plain wrong.

  Everyone asks me, do I skim? Well, it depends on how you define skimming. This I can assure you: I have cast my eyes on every word in the encyclopedia so far. I have not comprehended every word, but I have seen every word. Sometimes, yes, I zone out and merely sweep my eyes swiftly from left to right across the lines as I think about whether we need to get some more Tropicana orange juice or that I forgot to call my sister back, only to snap to attention a few minutes later.

  I’m particularly susceptible to this autopilot mode while reading the Macropaedia. For those who don’t pay proper attention to encyclopedia structure, the Britannica is divided into two main sections: the Micropaedia and the Macropaedia. The Micropaedia accounts for twelve volumes, and it contains thousands of little snippet-sized articles—a couple of paragraphs, maybe a page or two maximum. The Macropaedia—which clocks in at seventeen volumes—takes a handful of the Micro’s articles (accounting, China, evolution) and offers the extended dance mix. The Macro articles can be brutal, impenetrable, and they take just shy of a Cryptozoic eon (3 billion years) to read. The one on digestion and digestive systems droned on for thirty-nine pages. The one on continental land-forms had me pleading for mercy at fifty-six pages.

  I rotate between the two—I’ll read a few hundred pages from the Micropaedia’s Bs, then a couple of hundred from the Macropaedia’s Bs, after which I’ll switch back to the Micropaedia for still more Bs. Of the two, I much prefer the Micro. It’s more like the front section of a magazine—the section I work on at Esquire—as opposed to the daunting features in the middle. Right now, I’m in the Micro, and am going to dive into the section on the…

  dragonfly

  It can eat its own weight in thirty minutes. Just like Roger Ebert.

  Damn. I should be beyond Ebert jokes by now—I’m in the Ds, for crying out loud—but those pop culture references die hard.

  dress and adornment

  One of the sad ironies of my life is that I work at Esquire, an arbiter of men’s fashion, and yet I’m a shockingly bad dresser. I’ve got all the fashion sense of agricultural zealot Johnny Appleseed, who liked to wear an old coffee sack with holes cut out for arms.

  It wasn’t always this way. At one point in my mid-twenties, I paid a lot of attention to clothes. I got myself a closet full of tight trousers, some even in primary colors, and a bunch of fancy shirts with buttons made of things like mother-of-pearl. Then I got married. My only criterion now is that all my clothes should feel like pajamas, which can cause some problems at work. I wear these sneaker clogs around the office that would barely be acceptable at a beach cabana. Of course, when I go in to meet with my boss—an appropriately natty man—I make sure to change into my professional black leather shoes. One day last year, I got confused by all the trips back and forth to his office, and ended up taking a meeting with my fancy black shoe on my left foot, and my sneaker clog on the right, like a scene out of a seventies sitcom. And you wonder why I haven’t gotten a promotion in three years.

  All of this is to say that I took some twisted pleasure in the life of Beau Brummel, the biggest dandy in the Britannica, who gets a special shout out in the dress and adornment section. I had vaguely heard of Brummel, but knew practically nothing. Here’s what I found out: Brummel became famous for his good fashion at Eton, then added “wit” to his résumé at Oxford. He moved to London in 1799, befriended the Prince of Wales, set up a bachelor establishment, and was soon recognized as high society’s arbiter of good taste, parading about town in his cravats and silk stockings and pantaloons. Brummel “was so concerned with style that he had his coat made by one tailor, his waistcoat by another, and his breeches by a third…. His neckcloth was so elaborate and voluminous that his valet sometimes spent a whole morning getting it to sit properly.” The prince himself copied Brummel’s look.

  Then, in 1812, things started to unravel. Brummel quarreled with the prince (his tongue was “too sharp,” says the Britannica), blew through his thirty-thousand-pound inheritance on gambling debts and those damn white cravats. And on the night of May 16, 1816, Britain’s most celebrated fop fled to France to avoid his creditors. Brummel struggled on for years in France, and was briefly imprisoned there, also for debt.

  And here’s the sentence I know I shouldn’t enjoy, but I do: “He soon lost all his interest in dress; his personal appearance was slovenly and dirty, and he began to live in fantasies of the past.” I feel bad for him, but it’s a good fact to have in my plumed hat: even the quintessential dandy eventually gave up on fashion. This I can tell Julie next time she tells me I look like a homeless man.

  duality

  So far, the Britannica has been intermittently useful. It’s given me perspective on my life—sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse—loaded me up with cocktail party conversation, and helped Julie solve 42-Down. But what about the stuff my old boss at the Antioch Ledger newspaper called “news you can use”? What about good,
solid how-to hints?

  Well, to its credit, the Britannica isn’t entirely lacking in handy suggestions. For instance, there’s a nice write-up on how to protect yourself from painful g-forces when in a spaceship (just turn sideways to the rocket’s thrust). And there’s another on how to toss a boomerang properly (throw it downward, snapping your wrist right before release). And if you ever see a snake but aren’t sure whether it’s the deadly coral snake, just remember this poem about its coloring (“Red touching yellow, dangerous fellow”). But so far this winter, I’ve had minimal contact with boomerangs, acceleration stress, and coral snakes.

  Which brings me to tonight’s dinner. Finally, a breakthrough I’ve been waiting for, the first truly practical application of my knowledge. It’s a good feeling. Jolly good, even. Here’s what happened: My assistant Genevieve, a proud native of Anchorage (she smiles condescendingly whenever we whine about New York winters), sent me Alaskan crab legs as a Christmas gift. Julie is delighted, and has invited her friend Anna over for some crab soup.

  “You know,” I say, hovering around the kitchen as Julie puts the finishing touches on the soup, “the giant crab in Japan can grow to over twelve feet long.”

  “Wow, twelve feet,” says Julie. Her tone is that of a mother whose four-year-old has toddled in to display a particularly large strand of drool. Anna nods her head, pretending to be impressed as well.

  “Okay, soup’s on!” says Julie. She ladles out bowls for each of us. “Now the recipe suggests coriander on top. You want?”