Louise and I were sitting in an auditorium with some children for whom I was apparently a teacher. A man planning to give the children some psychological tests walked into the room. Before administering the tests to the children, he decided to test me in front of the children. I didn't mind taking the test; but I thought it might be rather embarrassing if I did poorly with the children watching.
The test was a simple word test. The man was going to say some words, and to each of his words I was supposed to answer back with another word. I was a bit apprehensive, but was basically unconcerned. I wondered what Louise was going to think of everything.
I was seated facing the stage of the auditorium. It seemed like a screen should have been on the stage for movies. But there was no screen and instead, at the back of the stage, a large window the size of a movie screen gave on to the outside world. I looked through the window and was almost mesmerized by the vista. I saw some buildings outside, but mostly I just saw blue sky. I wondered if what I was looking at would affect my responses on the word test.
The man began reading off words and I began responding. I responded directly and spontaneously to the words which he spoke but noticed that my responses were also slightly affected by what I saw outside through the window. It seemed that my answers somehow had something to do with the sky.
To one of the words he asked me I answered "skydiving." To the word "jump," I responded "leap." He said another word and I answered "spite." I stopped and thought that "spite" wasn't a very good answer. He said "melody" and I said "light. I wondered what I had meant when I had said "light." I didn't know whether I had been thinking of "light" in the sense of energy or in the sense of something of little substance.
To another word I answered "preservation." The word I had answered to had also ended in "-tion" and I realized several of my answers ended in "-tion." It struck me how those words rhymed; I wondered if the mind worked by rhyming words like that.
Suddenly I noticed that a clown dressed in something red seemed to be floating in the air outside. I wondered if the sight of the clown would begin to affect my answers.
The man stopped and said the exam was over. I turned to Louise and asked her how she thought I had done and whether she thought I was crazy. She said something and I thought she had said I had answered incorrectly and that I indeed was crazy. But then I realized I had misunderstood her. She said, "No. No. You did just fine. It didn't show you were crazy at all."
The test had been rather exhilarating and I felt quite good about it. It had been interesting to see how my mind had functioned. I fancied that my mind had demonstrated a poetic bent when I had thought of the words.
Copyright 2002 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
