The Intelligent Quotient: More Tales From The South Side Of 100

While almost everyone is familiar with scale used to determine an individual’s mental capabilities called the Intelligence Quotient (or IQ for short), remarkably few people understand how this scale works. The fundamental misunderstanding is that the IQ scale is based on a median rating of 100. This means that half the world’s population has an IQ above 100 and half the world’s population has an IQ below 100!

The good news is that the world’s population has gotten smarter, so over the course of the past 30 years or so, the median of 100 has moved slightly upwards. The bad news is, if you define your self worth by your IQ score and you were above the median of 100, your IQ has (theoretically) gone down somewhat.

So for this week’s column, allow me to share some truly astounding stories of limited IQs at work within our world (and no, I am not making any of these up!).

• Police seldom get credit for the lengths they will go to in order to save taxpayers the expense of a full-blown trial. Consider the Radnor, Pennsylvania, police officers who were interrogating a subject who, they quickly realized, boasted a distinctly limited intellect. Our heroes of frugality placed an ordinary metal colander on the suspect’s head, connected wires from the colander to the copy machine, and then placed a message that read, “He’s Lying” in the copier. Every time the suspect answered a question that the officers believed to be a lie, one of the officers would simply press the “copy” button on the copier. After several humiliating episodes of the machine “catching him in a lie,” the man confessed. CASE CLOSED.

• Police in Wichita, Kansas, were called to a small store in the local airport where a dutiful clerk had managed to keep a suspect occupied until they arrived. The suspect was apprehended without a fight and charged with counterfeiting. It seems the man had attempted to pay for his purchase with two $16 bills.

• A man escaped from jail in the Washington, DC, area and, a few days later, accompanied his girlfriend to her trial on robbery charges. During the lunch recess, the escapee went out to grab a quick bite to eat. While he was out, the girlfriend decided she needed to speak with him and sent word that he should be paged. Police officers immediately recognized the escapee’s name and, when he returned from his nosh, promptly arrested him. Interestingly, they added car theft to the charges against him since, while on his “lunch break,” he stole a car and drove it back to the courthouse.

• Convenience stores are preferred targets for criminals throughout the country but every now and then, the results can be entertaining. A man walked into a convenience store in Ionia, Michigan, and demanded that the two clerks on duty hand over all the money. Recognizing that the would-be robber was extremely intoxicated, the clerks refused. The would-be robber became irate and screamed that if they didn’t hand over the money he was going to call the police. The clerks still refused, so the would-be robber called the police, informed them that the clerks refused to give him the money, the police replied that they’d be right there to handle the situation, and the robber was promptly arrested upon their arrival.

• When a young woman in San Antonio, Texas, took her car in for an oil change she wasn’t planning on being arrested. An alert mechanic, however, phoned police after he popped the hood to her car and discovered 15 bags of marijuana tucked in nooks and crannies surrounding the engine. As she was being placed into the squad car, the woman exclaimed that she never thought they would need to open the car’s hood to change the oil.

• A man in Michigan bought a new Grand Cherokee a few years back and right off decided that he and a buddy should do some duck hunting. With their new vehicle, their guns, and plenty of beer the two men set off. Since it was winter, their favorite lake was frozen and they drive out onto the ice a reasonable distance to get ready for their afternoon recreation. The first thing they needed was some open water, which would (with their decoys placed) look inviting to passing ducks. Obviously, an ice auger wasn’t the answer, but the man with the truck had come prepared: he had a stick of dynamite with a 40-second fuse.

Now, to be fair, these men weren’t complete and total idiots, they did realize that even with a 40-second fuse they couldn’t just place the dynamite and hope to run away a safe distance on the ice. So they decided to walk a short distance from their truck and then throw the lit dynamite as far out onto the ice as possible. The only problem with this plan was the dog. You see, like all good duck hunters, these two had a faithful, well-trained black Labrador. No sooner had the dynamite left one of the hunters’ hands then the dog was off, gaining hold of the dynamite within moments of it landing. Holding the dynamite in its jaw the happy dog started to return to the hunters.

Needless to say, the two hunters were not happy with this turn of events. They frantically screamed, jumped, and waved their arms – but the dog still came toward them. In desperation, one of the hunters lifted his shotgun and fired at the dog. Unfortunately (once again), the men were hunting duck, so the gun was loaded with buckshot, which had little effect on the full-grown Lab. Still, the dog was perplexed. It paused a moment, then began advancing once again. The hunter fired a second shot and this time the dog did the sensible thing: it sought cover. Thinking quickly the dog dashed under the Grand Cherokee just before the dynamite exploded. Everything, except the two hunters, went to the bottom of the lake.

The insurance company informed the Cherokee owner a few days later that blowing up his vehicle with illegal dynamite and sinking the remains in a lake was simply not covered by his insurance policy. There is no word as to whether either of the men was cited for cruelty to animals.