When my mother was a very young child, too young to read, she was given an IQ test. The person who administered the test showed my mother a drawing of a cow, and asked what it was. My mother didn't know. She had grown up in apartment buildings in the Bronx, and had never seen a cow. She probably hadn't even visited the Bronx Zoo (but I suspect it wouldn't have had a cow).
The examiner asked, "Where does milk come from?"
My mother knew that one. "From a bottle!" she exclaimed. The milkman delivered the milk in glass bottles.
My mother told me this story several times over the years. She didn't think that IQ tests were fair.
When I was a very young child, I was given an IQ test. The person who administered the test was a friend of my mother. I think she was being trained to give IQ tests, and was using me as her guinea pig. As she drove me to the testing site, we merrily chatted away.
The testing room looked like a small classroom, but we were the only ones there. My mother's friend and I sat at a round table. She asked me a bunch of questions, probably much like the ones my mother had been asked 40 years earlier. I was more sophisticated than my mother had been. I could identify the drawing of the cow, though I felt quite insulted to be asked that question. Did she think I was stupid? Did my mother's friend not know the answers to these questions? She couldn't be that ignorant. With each dumb question, I got more annoyed, and less inclined to answer. If she wanted to know the answers to these questions, she should have made it worth my while, I felt.
After the battery of questions, she left the room. As she was leaving, she gestured toward a low cabinet and casually remarked that she would be right back, but there were toys in the cabinet that I was welcome to play with.
At that time, I had an infinite amount of patience. I waited patiently for my mother's friend to return. But as the wait got longer and longer, I got more and more bored. I've always had an aversion to having my time wasted. It seems disrespectful. In addition, she had promised me she would return soon. I was furious that she had broken her promise. She had better have a good excuse.
After what seemed like an eternity, I decided that perhaps she wasn't about to return, and I might as well see what toys were in the cabinet. I slid open the cabinet door, glanced at the unappealing dolls, realized that other kids had touched them and they were probably loaded with dirt and germs, and slid the cabinet door closed. I returned to my seat.
My mother's friend eventually returned. No apology. No explanation for why she hadn't returned promptly as promised. On the drive home I was sullen, and gave one-word answers to her questions. Later, hints from my mother led me to conclude that the test had been declared a failure since I had been uncooperative.
It was only years later that I wondered whether I was being watched through a two-way mirror, to see how I interacted with the toys. She must have followed an algorithm that said that she couldn't return to the room until I played with the toys for at least x minutes. It was a battle of wills to see who would cave first.
Like my mother, I'm not a big fan of IQ tests.