Dumb but lucky

So I'm a great big dummy--we've established that. I don't need yet another "How much do you know about___" quiz to remind me exactly how little I know about anything. And yet occasionally I am compelled to take another one. Why do I do this to myself? I think some unreasonably optimistic part of me holds out hope that this time I'll do well, thus restoring some of my lost faith in myself. On some level I must be thinking that maybe someday the right quiz will come along and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that all those other quizzes I've failed in the past were wrong, and the real truth is I'm very, deeply intelligent. Downright brilliant. Amazingly astute. Profoundly wise. Impressively gifted. So I keep taking the cursed things, and time and time again they reveal that I'm a big stupid dum dum-head.

The latest one was brought to my attention by my friend Donna, in an obvious attempt to shrink my ego further. It's comprised of questions from the US citizenship test, plus a few extra. In a spectacular failure, I managed to get 18 right out of 30, meaning that really, I should be kicked out of this country immediately. Even as we speak, there are scores of very intelligent, hopeful foreigners standing in line at the Department of Immigration, asking for a shot at living in this country, and by some unfair twist of fate, I got in free by being born here. No way could I make it in if I had to pass that test, clearly. In fact, judging by my score, it's doubtful I could even muster up the brain cells required to locate and drive to the Department of Immigration to fail the test. If I did make it there, and was handed the test and a No. 2 pencil, I'd probably sit on my haunches and begin eating the pencil and rubbing the test under my armpits. Then I'd start flinging poo at the test moderator. I'd be quickly deported back to the country from whence I came, where I'd go back to living in my mud hut and farming leaves for 2 cents per day. The most excitement I'd ever get in my impoverished life would be when Sally Struthers occasionally showed up to make another tear-filled commercial begging rich fatcat Americans to dig up their spare couch change to feed my entire village for a month. I'd be featured in the commercial, rail-thin and encircled by flies, clutching my distended belly. Meanwhile, Sally would stuff entire Sara Lee poundcakes into her face between takes. It would be a far cry from the easy life I live here in the U.S.

So I'd like to apologize to all those unfortunate, deserving men and women standing in line at the Department of Immigration, about to leap through several thousand hoops and shimmy up two billion miles of red tape hoping for a chance at a better life here in America. I know it's not fair that I'm here instead of you. I'd give you my place if I could, really! Okay, not really. Let's face it, I'm not tough enough to survive the mud hut/leaf farming life. And I'm not a big Sally Struthers fan.