HOME


A St. Louis Diary
By:
First Published:
 		Carole Bell
1995




When I was 9 years old, I danced to the song "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" on the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I still have my costume, a little blue dress made of taffeta with a real bustle in purple plaid. Who could believe it would take me all these years to get to St. Louis, or that I'd be going there to attend Mensa's Annual Gathering?
I'd only joined Mensa a year and a half earlier. But I'd seen the Mensa Bulletin describing the Boston AG. I asked myself, "Who are these people? Why would they waste a perfectly good weekend going to something like this?" I thought they were crazy.
How to explain, then, that only one year later, I'm on the way to St. Louis for the Mensa AG. Why would I go to St. Louis, let alone in July?
It began with the San Francisco RG. Practically the first Mensa event I attended, I had such a great time I wrote a column about it in Intelligencer (the San Francisco Mensa newsletter) The last line was: "The RG was special. It made me wonder if the annual gathering would be RG3."
I was knocked out by the idea of being in the same place with 1,200 bright people. I'd lived on both coasts, but had never been to the Midwest. I thought the chance to go to St. Louis for the first time with Mensa would be a kick. My friends thought I was crazy.

Tuesday, July 4th

I woke up to see the Mississippi, with a picture-perfect white river boat framed by the arch. I wondered if anyone else from Mensa was there too, since I'd seen no signs of anything Mensan last night. I spent the day at the St. Louis Fair, happening on the arch grounds right outside the hotel, the Adam's Mark.
At 4 p.m. I checked out the floor where the AG would happen. Nothing happening, just a few people wandering, dazed, looking for things to do. No message board. A man told me that a hospitality room would be opened for Mensa people to watch fireworks from at 8 p.m.
That never happened, but I did find 10 people looking out of the windows when I came back. My first chance to meet other Mensa people! I'd hoped to find people to go to the fireworks with, but everyone wanted to stay indoors. I went to watch the fireworks down by the riverbank alone.
A surprise when I went back upstairs: People just seemed to gravitate to the AG floor. That the AG hadn't started seemed irrelevant. Everyone just figured out where other Mensa people would be. Twenty people gathered around a leather sofa. They had the air of old friends who all knew each other, but were still friendly enough to include me. Stacy Van Geest walked over and introduced herself, then introduced me to everyone. She'd just been elected Mensa Treasurer, only weeks after her husband, Dave, was elected Mayor of their town. Her AG advice: "If it gets too much, go back to your room for a while. Enjoy yourself."
A spontaneous poker game had already started. The players looked sombre. I asked, "Is it serious or is it fun?" "Depends how serious you are about 25 cents a game!"
And I got to meet Barbara Ploegstra, who was running the AG. Barbara taught me how to find people to do something with the next morning. "Just hang out in the lobby. You'll find that Mensans form groups for wherever you want to go."
Then I met the Prophetic Ivy. "Your first Ag? You're lucky."
"Why?"
"Your first AG is always the coolest. There's this weird thing that happens. Suddenly you realise you're with Mensans. You'll see...."
"What do you mean?"
"Well the crossover happens at some point. Its weird. You feel like you're a genius hanging out with other geniuses. You'll see." The Ivy Prophecy.
It would never happen to me, I swore to myself. I would never be that arrogant. Besides, most of the people I'd met in Mensa were like most of my other friends. No one struck me particularly as a genius. And hanging out with Mensans wouldn't affect m. No way. I wondered what she was talking about.

Wednesday, July 5

Stacey called and we made plans to see the arch together. I wanted to see what was happening on the fourth floor, so we agreed to meet there.
People! Registration wasn't open until 3 p.m., so people had no place to go. But the set-up room for hospitality was buzzing. You could see the Mensans had been there by the compulsive way that everything was stacked on table spanning the room. There was even a table set up with a first-aid kit on one side and a box of ready remedies on the other: aspirin, Alka-seltzer, Motrin and Tylenol. Hospitality was ready!
Laura Main of St. Louis Mensa was on the phone. "Okay, how many people do you need on the loading dock?" She dismissed how hard she was working with, "I'm just here because all the AG committee is in a meeting."
Laura told me her official title: "Goddess of Procurement of Alcoholic Beverages." Having bought beer for the RG for the past three years, "I've gotten to know the guy at the liquor store real well." She too refused praise for how hard she was working. "You should talk to Rocky - Rochelle Lefarth. She's hospitality Chair. She really works hard."
"Oh, there you are." I joined Stacey and her family for a tour of the arch. John and Sarah were with them. He's 13, and in Mensa, Sarah's 12 and isn't. I asked John what events he goes to. "AGs." He's been to three.
While we waited in line to get the tickets, we found a newspaper that gave ticket information. You can but tickets for four separate activities, in a number of price combinations. We all wanted to go to the top, and were figuring out what else we each wanted to do.
Imagine a group of Mensans taking in information as fast as they could, each wanting to decide quickly and not waste the day. I chose what I wanted to do and was studying time schedules when I heard Stacey say, "The first available tram leaves at 1:15." How did she - ? She'd found the sign that showed departure times.
I'm searching other info in the newspaper, Dave's looking up the other time schedules, and I suddenly take it all in: When I'm with other people, and I find information quickly like that, I'm invariably challenged. "Where'd you see that? How do you know that?" Give me a tangle of questions and disorganisation and I'm right on it, quickly sorting information. Then you have to always explain everything. But Stacey and I got it down fast, easily. No questions.
It took my breath away. I realized here was someone like me. And I realized how smart she was. The Ivy Prophecy. Was the prediction that I scoffed at coming true?
We wound up with two different ticket sellers at the ticket desk; mine was clear about things, Stacey's wasn't. When our tickets came out wrong it was exasperating. I knew I didn't need to explain my exasperation to Dace and Stacey, nor they to me; I saw Dave's eyes. It was a little thing, yet we'd agreed without speaking to let it pass. Was this what Ivy was talking about? They understood.
The ranger from the national parks told the arch history as we waited for the tram. "And on a very warm day in St. Louis ... it was ready." I remembered the arch construction movie had said it was 40 degrees. Stacey looked at me. She mouthed "40". We smiled.
The view from the top of the arch was pretty good, by the way, the movie showing how they built it was even better.

Wednesday, afternoon

The fourth floor was crazy. Everyone wanted to register first. The huge foyer that was empty at 11 a.m. now teemed with people, all standing in super-long lines. No one seemed to mind, though. There was an air of group knowledge that something nice was starting soon and you could wait a few minutes, Long lines of Mensans watched newcomers exit the elevators, each group in turn shocked that they weren't first.
It definitely paid to register by mail; a smaller line, and one that moved. More time to linger over sticker decisions, a shorter wait to get to hospitality.
Stickers turned out to be important at the AG. Piles of green, yellow and red peel-off circles garnished a table near the registration window, next to another pile of sticker stars in the same colours. You were supposed to adorn your badge with the colour that told people how open you were to getting hugged.
"What's the difference between the circles and the stars?" I asked the woman. "Nothing, they mean the same thing."
"What do they mean, exactly?"
"Think of it as a traffic light. The green ones mean you want to be hugged a lot. Use the red ones of you don't."
"What's the difference between yellow and nothing?"
"That's what I was thinking."
"Moment of ambivalence, of indecision. Getting hugs from people I don't want them from is not a turn on. My badge went blank.
The AG setting was handily all on one floor. There was only one direction to turn toward leaving registration, and at the end of the hall: the magic Hospitality. I'd heard that a fortune would be spent on food at the AG, and wondered why.
Michael Eager, San Francisco's LocSec, explained it to me. "Hospitality's the place where people gather. Providing food's a way to make sure this happens." So there were reasons for the giveaway. I'd seen people getting on edge, waiting for the room to open. Their plan: spend their time in hospitality so they could save on eating out. The rationale of "Give them food and they will come" might work.
It worked impeccably. Veni, vici, mangia.

Hospitality was mobbed as soon as it opened. There was such a dazzling array of people in every direction that walking into the room came as a real jolt. Eating, drinking beer (the place just opened!), people jumping all over; it was not what you'd call a sedate moment. Everyone seemed to know each other, everyone but me.
I asked to join two women sitting at a table. They'd come from different Mensa groups, became friends at an earlier AG, and shared a room this time.
"It's your first AG? There are some - (pause) - characters. Do you know what the characters mean?" Gwen Hanks, from Orangeburg, S.C., asked me.
I realized she was talking about the coloured stickers. Her own badge was pretty clear: Three red circles.
"It doesn't matter if you use a star or a circle. Red means absolutely no touching whatsoever. Yellow means ‘I might hug you, but ask first.'"
Then came a grave warning from Barbara Stimmel of Midway, Ga. "Green means you want indiscriminate open-season hugging."
She also had three red circles.
She laughed conspiratorially. "What you do is put a red on you, and if you see someone you want to hug, you look for a green on them."
I got up for something to drink. A loud accusation was hurled at me, by Chris Bates of Chicago: "You aren't wearing little thingies on your badge."
"What's the difference between yellow and nothing?" I asked.
"Yellow makes it clear. They can't claim that you're fair game."
With all the chips and cookies and midnight feasts they scheduled, it would be hard to eat healthily. Was it just that I'm from California? Soda everywhere, but no mineral water. Why wasn't there any fruit? (That appeared Thursday and, to be fair, continued to be piled high for the rest of the week.)
I later met Rose Lee Crutcher, who got the AG rooms all on the same floor, the prestigious fourth floor of the Adam's Mark Hotel. When I heard she'd negotiated the contract, I realized that this was one amazing woman.
And then I met Hutch (Mark Hutchenreuther of Oxnard, Calif.). He wore a T-shirt that looked original, which he made - HE MADE IT - just for the AG. "Mensa is Life," it said. He'd made another, too: "Will speak at Mensa gatherings for food, drink or whatever."
Hutch warned me to be sure I didn't stay too long in Hospitality. "There are people who don't ever leave this room."
And then this prediction of his own: "You're gonna be in awe. Like, ‘Why didn't I do this sooner.'"
He was right. I'd already begun to feel that way.

"The first AG is very similar to being a virgin. There's never a second first time. And it truly describes the sensations that never happen again."
The Joyce Lundeen, Of Oklahoma City

"The first time I went to an AG I sat in the first meal and looked around. The feeling was not one of being a genius, just one of being in absolute awe of the potential in the room, and the connections."
Jon Lundeen, married to The Joyce

Wednesday night

Just a few activities were planned. Most people skipped them to recover from their trips. Many people wouldn't even arrive until Thursday.
At 11 p.m. there was "Feeding Frenzy No. 1." A 6-foot-long trough was filled with more Mexican food - beans, cheese, salsa - more than even people who skipped dinner could want. I wasn't surprised when I saw more people there than I'd seen all day.
I noticed Susan Heimlich's badge immediately. She's from New York, and she had two green circles touching each other. A bit of yellow was peeking through between the two of them.
"Each AG, the Yellow gets smaller. When I started out I just had yellow. Now the green circles are edging the yellow out."
Rick Baron from Battle Creek, Mich., had one slightly more explicit: a yellow circle with a green star inside. "It means, ‘Ask, but probably yes.'"
Debra Baron had a star trilogy: a green star, a yellow, then a red - one on top of the other.
"I thought the stars were prettier," she said.
"What does it mean?"
"It means I'm moody."

Thursday morning

I wore my new AG T-shirt, which I'd bought the day before. This was a big jump for me; the first time I'd wore anything that said "Mensa." Who to tell me that I'd joined Mensa was a big topic with me, and I was still in the stage of not telling everyone. But I was at the AG! And the red T-shirt said that I felt good about it.
The AG program was beautiful; it was helpful, it was clear, and it made everything sound worth going to. The puzzle was how to go to everything when everything I wanted to go to took place all at the same time. My criteria was: something I can't get from a book, things I can't see elsewhere, things that were fun, and things that were interesting (=fun!).
So I headed right to Cookie Bakke's "Poof! You're a Card Counter." Her bio said she's a long-time Mensa member who does card counting as a profession. This I had to see. She gave us the cards, the tips and the truth about the dinner they gave her when she got kicked out of a casino. She got us all fired up for the gambling on the boat trip Friday night, and made us a promise: "Is your game going to change because of today? Yes it is!"
Then I heard Abbie Salny telling "Dumb things smart people do." The large room was filled completely. Lots of laughing.
I looked around. To my surprise I was beginning to know people in the crowd. I recognised Elna Tymes from San Francisco, wearing her own version of the two green circles/bits of yellow peeking through. "It means I'm perfectly willing to hug, but I want to check things out first." She went on to show "Variations on a Theme of Six hugs."
I wanted to hear the tricks of burglars at "Burglars on the Job," and maybe get my Myers-Briggs letters done again. But the St. Louis bus tour got me, and the rest of the afternoon as well. I thought a Mensa-led bus tour would be special and that the wise-cracks would flow, but it wasn't Mensa-led. I wish it had been.
Virginia Harvey of Kansas City was sitting next to me on the bus. She'd been in Mensa 22 years. Why does she go to AGs? "Meeting people. People are the reason to come to an AG." We wanted to talk, but each time we tried, the driver told us to be quiet. It was his show.
I left the group at Union Station and raced back in time for "Mensa On-line" with Barbara Ploegstra. Where did she get the energy? She looked tired, but gamely stood there fielding questions from and SRO crowd. I learned that a lot of people join Mensa because of the forums on-line.
What forums? What were they talking about? The Mensa forums were on Compuserve; I had America Online. Bob Beatty took care of that: He came with about 250 free kits for Compuserve and had none left by the end of the day. It was nice of Bob; it was good business for Compuserve; now I could gossip about Mensa on my computer.
Barbara said, "Raise your hands if I knew you on-line before the AG." Half the room raised their hands. There was a strange look on her face as she tried matching the faces to people she'd been talking to on-screen.
One of the problems you have at an AG is there are too many good things to choose from and they happen all at the same time. While I heard Abbey Salny, I missed the program on comic books, and the St. Louis tour derailed me not only from the Myers-Briggs Test and the ballroom dancing that Don Jacobs of New York was leading, but from something else that looked interesting: "How to Develop and Use Creativity,"" given by Hutch.
I later asked him what to do about the problem.
"Each time I give a program here, there is something I really want to see, and I can't go to it because I'm giving a talk."
"Best case solution?"
"Just live with it. It's an AG."

Thursday night

There were stories in the kids' room at 7 p.m., but 8 p.m. brought a definitely adult evening: fish bowl, poker and a surprise - stripping, the latter labelled in capitals WOMEN ONLY.
This was the second Mensa fish bowl I'd been to. At the start, each sex gathered with its own to try and come up with questions for the opposite sex to answer. The women came up with 23 of them, then pared the list to the required five. It went on for three hours! It made Mensa history: the men's No. 1 question, demanding a frank answer from women, was exactly what the women wanted to know from men.
Next, there was no chance I was going to miss this: "How to Strip For Your Man," with M.J. Tala. We all giggled our way through it as she stripped not once, but twice; we really roared along with the music and M..J's tips. My favourites: "Sleaze, like style, is timeless." and "The less you can show for the longest amount of time is key."
Another feast! This time Italian, with St. Louis-style toasted ravioli. Midnight didn't stop Hospitality from being full; nothing did.
I spotted a new sticker configuration on the way up to my room: a gold star in a yellow circle worn by Terry Smith of Anaheim, Calif. Meaning? "I rarely hug but when I do I'm very good!"

A knock on the door at 3 a.m. "Get dressed and go to te lobby." A brand-new friendship hung in the balance for someone to do this.
"Can I trust you? This better be worth losing sleep over!"
It was. People were up. Things were happening. Six bodies overlapped on the round cushions in the hall. Couples were - you know - here and there. All-night poker game still going. And a dozen people who thought it was daytime were burning the lights in Hospitality. I couldn't believe it. Don't these people have to sleep?

Friday morning

This was my first chance to get a moment with Greg Krumrey, who did registration with his wife, Edy. I'd been trying to talk to him since registration (was it only two days earlier? How long had I been here? I was too tired to remember.) He was always managing people, managing crises at the computer, on the walkie-talkie with the AG Committee.
Finally, answers to my questions:
How many people? "More than 1,200."
Who came the farthest? "People from Alaska, Hawaii, Austria, England, Germany."
I was Greg as a real AG hero: He opened registration Thursday at 9 a.m., closed it at 7 p.m., set up sound equipment for the talent show at 8:15 p.m., then ran sound until 11:30 p.m., and packed up equipment until 12:15 a.m. He checked on Hospitality at 1:30 a.m. ("bustling with people") then came back to check again at 7:30 a.m. this morning ("I saw many of the same people still there.")
What was the AG Committee feeding its people? They were all ego-less, tireless and none would take credit. And they all said the same thing: "The Committee was great."
Friday brought "Humor - the Second Best Drug" with William Travis of Birmingham, Ala., as well as "Murder She Write," with Harold Messler, the St. Louis Police Department's Chief Criminologist, who staged a mock crime scene complete with "Police - do not cross" tape. Then the display disappeared. (He narrowed the culprit down to 1,200 Mensans).
I gave up "Stupid machines and Intelligent People" (Artificial Intelligence basics) to go to what I'd heard would be fantastic: Richard Lederer's "The Play of Words." People were right, he was hilarious. And very clever - it was exercise for all our playful minds.
"High Performance Thinking Skills" was at 1:30 p.m. This I had to see: Teaching thinking to Mensans. I sat next to Don Jacobs, which was pretty lucky for me, since what he taught me about Mensa explained a great deal about what I was experiencing at the AG.
He told me why AGs work: "At an AG, I'm amongst people all of whom are non-traditional in their thinking and thrive on it."
"You see," he went on, "it's not a question of going to some intellectual presentation. The pleasure I get from being here is it's the one time a year that I'm a majority instead of a minority."
And he talked to me about why Mensa works for him.
"The nature of Mensa is that people do what works for them. People are very individual. And nobody cares. You're accepted for whatever it is you do and who you are.
"At one AG, I sat in the corner and didn't feel like talking to anyone. People just accepted me. At the next AG, people said that I looked like the loneliest person in the world. Yet what I felt was acceptance.
"The nature of higher intelligence is that you don't think in traditional terms. And you tend to be ostracized among the other people because you're not like everyone else." He had just told my life story.
Next I wanted to go to M.J.'s Country Line Dancing (yes, the stripper from last night"), then maybe the tasting of wines from Missouri - but big white signs appeared on the door to Hospitality, changing my plans: The buses for the casino trip would be leaving two hours ahead of schedule so river boat cruisers wouldn't have to miss the costume party. Scratch the dancing wines.
Bob Smith of St. Louis was cool about the IQ test he'd proctor. With fewer than 10 people registered today, he still expected a large crowd Sunday. "We're getting lots of PR. Last time we hoped for 50 people, and got 165."
Time for a new badge: on Stephanie Smilay from Washington, D.C. (LocSec, Metropolitan Washington Mensa). This one had two green stars, two silver stars and two gold stars.
"They mean Ambiguity."
"Why do it?"
"Because I just can't stand putting a green dot like everybody else does. I don't want to be like everyone else."

Friday night

The Alton Belle river boat casino trip was a great idea that didn't work - for me. If you didn't get upstairs fast, you couldn't find a seat outside. But to get outside, you had to go through two floors of gambling. The problem? Temptation? No, smoke.
My original reason for going was still there, I told myself, to be on a boat on the Mississippi. When I finally got a seat outside, it was total escape. We were on the fabled river, the air was sweetly warm, and there was no pressure from conflicting events. Everyone was in a mellow mood.
I'm sure the HalloweeM in July costume party was wonderful, but I missed it. I went to my room for just a few minutes after the boat ride and I woke up when HalloweeM had one hour left. How could I have done that?
You can only cheat sleep for just so much. I now regretted my 3 a.m. lobby check. I went down to the large ballroom anyway. Even an hour's worth of dancing sounded good to me; I love to dance.
It was ... strange; a bizarre melange of styles and people wandering into the hallway; wizard costumes next to princesses and court jesters walking with regular folks, dressed in T-shirts and shorts. Someone in a quite elaborate costume walked arm in arm with someone else in a normal dress. Balloons and confetti were strewn everywhere. I saw Barbara Ploegstra in a beautiful pink dress getting a big hug from someone. This, and the chorus line she joined later on the dance floor, gave me hope that even AG chairs could have some fun. It seemed only fair; at last she took a few minutes to enjoy the party she'd brought to life.
I later asked her how much work the AG really took.
"It was two and a half years of hard work peaking in five days. The magnitude of the gathering was incredible."
Not a surprise. Everywhere I went, I saw AG Committee people on their walkie-talkies, working all the time.

Saturday morning

I wanted to go to everything, but I had to go to "City of the Gabriels: Jazz in St. Louis" with Dennis Owsley. I love music. And at noon, I wanted to hit the Hell's Mensans party. I went from never knowing about them to wondering who these people were. "They're the party SIG," people kept telling me. Then why did they all look like bikers?
I never got any of it; I kept meeting people. I kept finding new sticker mutations. And meeting people. And noticing T-shirts. And meeting people.
Three separate times I forget which way I was headed, having stopped to talk with someone I'd danced with the past night, or someone who called out to me. I laughed at this, realizing all the advice I'd gotten was correct; if it's the journey and not the destination, then this was splendid.
"It's AG normal," I told myself. And never skipped a beat.
I did get to "Mr. Science," (people telling funny stories about scientific things - you had to be there). But I never made "Gifted's in the Workplace" or "Executive Protection"
I did make the MERF Voice Auction (II) where I made my first successful bid: I bought a 30-year history of Mensa. Being at the AG made me want to know more, and I figured this would help.

Saturday night

Cocktails and banquets on the schedule. Both the dinner and Richard Lederer's risque after-dinner talk were excellent, though the scatological wordplay turned off some people. No one could deny, though, that the speech put us in the mood for what came next: The Mr. Mensa Contest.
I think the essence of the AG coming together was the Mr. Mensa Contest. By Saturday night, I'd slept enough, eaten enough, danced enough, learned enough, met enough new people, AG'd enough. I'd figured out how to decide what I wanted to see, not be sorry when I never got there, and how to escape. (I made the sauna in the hotel's health club my private refuge.)
I felt relaxed enough to just let things happen and miss things, and alert enough to know what not to miss. I knew enough people to see someone I liked, or at least someone I'd spoken with, in every room I entered. And I knew enough to wish that now, the AG were just beginning.
Why did it take all week for me to get to this point? Now that I'm ready for the AG to begin, it's going to be over in 15 hours.
A couple of the Mr. Mensa contestants actually strutted, strutted before the judges. They all had good answers to the judges' questions (yes, there were questions, just like the TV pageants). My favourite was Jim Wolin of New York, in elegant tan linen, who answered, "what does ‘ladies first' mean to you?"
"Come again?..."
There was even a talent contest for the 12 contestants. In fact one of them wasn't a man. M.J. Tala (yes, the same one), was Contestant No. 7. (I thought it would be quite unique if the winner of the Mr. Mensa contest were a woman, but it didn't happen.)
Something happened during the talent contest. Bruce Ellington from North Carolina said, "I'm going to do something that no one has ever done before to my knowledge. I'm gonna sit here and not say a word for three minutes."
And he did. That's when it happened. Sally Banco, one of the judges and the past RVC of region 2 got up and took Ellington's beer mug from him. She told him that all he had to do is to ask for it. He kept his silence, and she sat down.
Then Jan Zimmerman from St. Louis, walked over and offered him, as a woman sitting close by put it "enticements and red blooded male would find hard to resist."
Ellington resisted.
She did a shimmy in front of him, saying, "If you want this, all you have to do is ask for it."
He resisted.
Enter Ellen Brown.
She'd been to lots of earlier AGs, but never as a woman. Now she was a pre-operational transsexual woman, about to start a real-life test to live a woman's role for at least a year. The test was to start a few weeks after the AG.
She already knew many people at the AG, but it was the first time that anyone at the AG knew her as Ellen. She'd been known as Ellen on the CompuServe Mensa Forum since the beginning of the year, and had been insistent on being called by her new name on-line. So she didn't want to come to the AG and use her old name, especially when she knew that after the AG she'd be Ellen anyway.
"I saw what Jan was doing, and I was sitting close to where Sally was sitting. I was about to get up when Sally got up, then I waited till she came back and the Jan got up. When she sat down, it was my turn."
So a pre-operational transsexual woman in a low-cut red-velvet dress with a slit up her thigh went and sat on this would-be Mr. Mensa's lap.
He still kept silent.
She put her arm around his neck and started playing with his ear. "Oh, come on, Brucie, won't you talk to me? Can I have a little kiss?"
Silence.
"He kissed me but he never said a word."
The audience roared.
It was the epitomal moment of the AG - a communal acceptance of Ellington's silent act, Ellen in her sexy red-velvet dress, the thigh-high slit, and all of us.
It was a group hurrah for us, for Mensans. And for the shared sense that no one else in the larger world would possibly understand.

2:50 a.m. Sunday

I'm sleepy but not sleepy. Hungry but not really, aware I'm up because I don't want it all to end. I'm sitting at a round table with five people at 3 a.m. Is it me or does the cake on the serving table look like Einstein? It is Einstein.
Hospitality still has 50 people. Two men bring out huge veggie platters at 3 in the morning. Mr Mensa is still wearing his gold foil laurel wreath with his red train engineer's cap. He's dancing with a woman in a gold sequin off-the-shoulder full-length gown and silver lame heels. The absence of music seems to be beside the point.
3:20 a.m. I'm slowing down. Virginia Silk of Chicago joined us. "I can't sleep, I'm too tired," she said.
I know the Ag has to end soon, because if it doesn't, I'll keep looking at every badge forever, and they'll all be different and I'll never escape.
I asked Bruce Ellington how it feels to be Mr. Mensa.
"Embarrassing. I've heard great AG stories, but now I am one."
9 a.m. Sunday Anyone could go to the open AMC meeting, so I went to see what happened there. I learned a lot about Mensa itself, things that would affect how I felt about this group.
I learned that the membership is graying, and that of every 100 members who joined in 1991, 91 are now gone.
It made me sad. I want Mensa to survive, and it won't unless this pattern gets reversed. If anything, it made me determined to find out more ways to be involved and though it sounds corny, to contribute. I was benefiting; I wanted Mensa to thrive.
Then Dick Amyx resigned.
I don't find it surprising that any organization has its share of inside politics; with the intelligence and ego levels in Mensa, how could it go any other way?
Despite my newness, I did have reactions. But I'm too new; mostly, I just watched Mensa in shock.
Time to go home.
But not before the farewell brunch. I got to meet the original Mensa founder, Lancelot Ware, and to see so much that moved me deeply that I'd have to write a book instead of this article.
Out in the hall, Dr. Ware had put on his new Hell's Mensans T-shirt. I wondered what he thought his creation had grown into"

I'd put a note on the message board looking for people to go to dinner with, and people started signing up immediately - but where to go? I left the fourth floor to ask the concierge, who got frustrated when she couldn't understand what I wanted. (California food.) Her frustration made us go into a loop. Though I communicate for a living, she just didn't "get it". And that upset me.
I'd come down with PASS (Post-AG Stress Syndrome)! The AG spoiled me - I'd forgotten what dealing with the real world was like.
I went back to the fourth floor, where it was safe. Bob smith, in proctor mode, was still hard at work - 146 people were lined up for the IQ test.

"Yes, it was real hard work going back to the real world, where people don't flirt and hug all the time." Neil Goulder, London.

"What happens usually at the end of the AG is that first-timers fail to read the microscopic warning on the badges: ‘Attendance may be habit forming.' You may find yourself planning for the next AG." Dave Remine, AMC Chairman.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I can't help myself. I'm even thinking on a global scale: Maybe Mensa's 50th anniversary in London next year? The AG was special. It made me wonder if the International Gathering would be AG3?

When I got home, three people I'd met at the AG had already sent e-mail! I've received letters, phone calls - from people I'd never met before the AG. When I see then on-line in the Mensa Forum, I can picture them.
The AG didn't end it for me, it continues. I'm thrilled by all the friendships I've made, if a bit embarrassed at bubbling with such enthusiasm.
I feel different about my own intelligence now. It's been a delight to learn that there are other people like me. The AG was a short-cut key to finding them.
I feel connected in a was that the little girl dancing to "Meet me in St. Louis" couldn't have dreamed of. I come away astonished at the potential of Mensa.
Hearing this, my friends think I'm not so crazy now.
Precisely my point.


Copyright Carole Bell 1995