Slug Club

By Christine Catlin

"Hey Christine, how's it going?"

I looked up from my bubble of self-pity and let my soggy pizza slip back on the cafeteria tray. I found myself eye to eye with a high school sophomore, my age, wearing a pair of crooked green glasses that magnified his eyes.

"Fine," I muttered, glancing nervously at the nearby table of "jocks" who had been my so-called friends. "What do you want?"

The boy, Brandon, who seemed to fit the labels of both "kind-of-cute" and "nerd" at the same time, thrust a flyer into my hand.

"Come join the IQ Elite at Junior Mensa Club," he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "We meet every Tuesday, and we will prevent you from becoming just another teenaged mental slug. Did you know a baby octopus is about the size of a flea at birth?"

"Interesting," I said, with as much enthusiasm as possible, hoping he would go away. "I'll think about it."

As he left I felt another wave of self-pity envelop me. Ever since my knee had been injured in a basketball game my sports had gone out the window — running, swimming, biking, basketball... everything. I was an outcast from my friends. An enraged outcast. And if even the nerds were taking sympathy on me, I was obviously falling pretty low on the social ladder.

I looked at the flyer.

"Come join Junior Mensa! To participate you must pass a basic IQ test, memorize 50 interesting facts, dedicate yourself to a minimum 15 minutes of classical music studies a day, and be taking a language course. We meet every Tuesday, but keep exercising your brain all week!"

I crumpled the flyer into a ball and put my head on the table. Sure, I might be a mental slug. I subscribed to the theory that intelligence was unhealthy in excess quantities. The most brain power I used was calculating my mile splits when running around the track.

Yet as we were dismissed from the cafeteria and I saw my friends receding in a tight group, I found myself unconsciously smoothing the flyer out again. In the rage I felt for being abandoned I suddenly saw Mensa as a challenge — just like any challenge in sports. Who was to say I couldn't pass a stupid IQ test and memorize 50 facts? Who was to say I couldn't learn a foreign language if I wanted to? Who was to say I couldn't — at least until my knee got better — become a temporary "nerd"?

That evening I Googled everything I could think of related to improving mental prowess. I even made a list of my brain's workout regime. Every afternoon I assigned myself the task of completing two puzzles and two crosswords in less than one hour. Afterward I was to listen to 30 minutes of Mozart while memorizing trivia from the Internet. Then I had to study all my textbooks.

Meanwhile, I was also going to have a strict lifestyle change. I had to limit my junk food intake (it restricts brain cells from growing), skip items with simple sugar (insulin is released into the blood and makes a person sluggish), get a minimum of eight hours of sleep, and drink one cup of coffee every morning (the caffeine is an ideal mental stimulant). It was going to be tough, but I felt up to the challenge. After all, it couldn't be any harder than running mile repeats in Track. I vowed to knock the socks right off the Junior Mensa team.

At first the regime seemed impossible, especially when I saw my old friends trooping towards the gym for basketball practice after school. Yet this only made my competitive fire burn brighter. At lunch I started eating a deli sandwich with skim milk, and for desert I had a tub of vanilla yogurt. I realized I felt more energized, and for once, intelligent. Did you know that Teflon is the slipperiest substance in the world? Or that medical research has found substances in mistletoe that can slow down tumor growth? Or that lemon drops are as acidic to your teeth as battery acid? I was brimming with knowledge.

When the time came for the Junior Mensa test I approached Brandon with as much self-confidence as humanly possible.

"I'm here to take the Junior Mensa test," I said self-importantly. "Do you want me to recite my 50 random facts or take the IQ test first?"

Brandon was surprised.

"Oh, you wanted to do Junior Mensa?"

"Yeah...."

"We didn't have enough people interested, so we had to cancel," he said.

I felt as if I was an insignificant ant that had been stepped on. My mouth dropped open as I realized that I had just wasted three weeks of my life becoming smart... for nothing.

I went home that afternoon in a daze, and found myself unsure of what to do with myself. Eventually, following my old routine, I set to work solving crosswords and creating puzzles. What was I doing this for? Fortunately, as the last note of Mozart's "Symphony 25" hung in the air, I had an epiphany.

"Slugs..." I said thoughtfully. "Teenaged mental slugs..."

The next day I made a beeline for Brandon at lunch.

"I think I know what's wrong with Junior Mensa," I said, ignoring the stares from his "nerd friends." "It didn't have enough relevance to real life... How many times in your lifetime do you need to know that a hippo can open its mouth four feet wide?"

He didn't answer.

"Exactly. Trivia means nothing. Learning should be about making decisions that improve your life... keeping your brain active reduces your risk of dementia; reading improves your memory and vocabulary; doing sports decreases stress and risk of depression with endorphins. It's relevant to everyone, not just nerds. Here." I handed him a flyer. On it I'd written, "STOP THE SLUGS!"

After a second, a grin spread across his face. He agreed to meet me at school the next morning and start distributing posters. Among the "STOP THE SLUGS" posters were signs on healthy eating, proper sanitation, exercise, and, my personal favorite... a poster of gorillas that said "Cliques are primitive. Start the evolution!"

To begin recruiting members we handed out free coffee that had been donated by the teachers' lounge, with signs that illustrated the mental benefits of caffeine and its stimulation. We also recited the benefits of getting at least eight hours of sleep. In our first week we recruited 150 members — nerds and non-nerds. Brandon and I, who were now widely recognized as the ringleaders, suddenly found ourselves being treated like school celebrities. But most important to me was the day when my old friends, the "Jocks," walked over to greet me.

"Hey Christine, that SLUG stuff looks like it's gotten really big," my old friend Callie said.

I nodded. "It has. We're trying to make brain improvement a goal for everyone, regardless of social status."

"Urm... well... do you think we could join?"

I grinned in disbelief.

I knew at that moment that I had finally reached my goal. To this day, though I am now capable of doing sports again, I no longer consider myself a primitive member of the "Jocks," nor a trivia-memorizing member of the "Nerds." Those fences have been shattered. My pride for what I have done — improving the minds of teens, breaking social barriers, and creating awareness of lifelong learning — is greater than the pride I felt winning any sport. The Slug Club, our high school society that encourages lifelong learning and good decisions, lives on.

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