Mensa and The Bye Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case

I was living with my father in Philadelphia during my first year of college at Temple University. It was convenient in that it was walking distance (for an eighteen-year-old) to campus. There also was the option of riding to school some mornings with my father who taught there.

One night, just days after the spring 1977 semester ended, just before my father was going to take the rest of the family to England for the summer, he and I were watching the last episode of the season of Columbo. It was a show we both enjoyed and this particular episode featured Columbo matching wits with a murderer who was a member of an organization for people with exceptionally high IQs who kills another member. The episode was titled The Bye Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case.

Theodore Bikel (left) stars on Columbo
in The Bye Bye Sky High Murder Case.

I asked my father if such an organization exists, to which he answered that not only did it exist, but that he was a member and had been for ten years. “It’s called Mensa,” he added. “You have to score in the top two percent on any standard IQ test to be accepted.”

“In fact,” he added, “I just got a certificate from them,” which he showed me during the next commercial break, “For being a member in good standing for ten years.”

“What’s your IQ?” I asked him.

“One hundred and forty,” he told me.

“Do you think I could get into Mensa?”

“No, I don’t think you’re smart enough.” That was my father—ever the loving, encouraging, empowering parent.

At least I was smart enough not to accept my father’s judgement on matters like this. Although my father was indeed very intelligent, I always suspected he suffered from some kind of psychological disorder such as Asperger’s long before there was such a diagnosis. He was always a little socially inept especially in his interactions with his family. This despite the fact that he was, at the time, one of the world’s foremost authorities on evolution and the work of Charles Darwin.

“But, I’m your son. Shouldn’t I, theoretically at least, have a comparable IQ to yours?”

“Yes, except that my genes were likely diluted by your mother’s.” Years later I mentioned this conversation to my mother to which she simply replied, “I’m smarter than your father.”

That summer vacation I started the first of many endeavors to prove my father wrong. I contacted Mensa to find out how I would go about joining and was told that every few months there was Mensa-sponsored IQ testing at the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute (EPPI). I registered for one of these tests and made the half hour bus ride there.

I knew nothing about IQ tests. I assumed they were not tests for which you could study. I knew I would be given the California Test of Mental Maturity but didn’t bother going to the library to at least find a sample of one.

I waited for the results for what seemed months. Keep in mind this was in the day in which all correspondence went through the mail. Finally I got a letter, not from EPPI, but from Mensa telling me what my IQ was and that I was eligible to join Mensa. My first reaction was to pick up the phone and call my father, but then I realized that I was not trying to prove anything to my father, just myself. I knew the right time would come to let him know.

Nor did I join Mensa at the time. It wasn’t until I was finishing college and had so little on my résumé that I thought putting “Member of Mensa” on it might help. When I finally joined, I was sent membership information and a catalog of various Mensa paraphernalia such as ties, hats, t-shirts and sweatshirts. I ordered a sweatshirt.

One day my father called and told me he needed me to clear the dead rats out of the crawl space in the basement. “At least you’re good something,” he added. My father lived in a Philadelphia row house that, like most old urban houses, had a perpetual rat problem. I was still thin enough at 21 to be able to crawl through the narrow opening, armed with nothing but a banderilla—the colorful barbed-spear that bullfighters use—and a flashlight.

I showed up with my Mensa sweatshirt on.

My father just looked at my sweatshirt and asked, “What was your IQ score?”

“142,” I said with a smile.

“That’s my boy,” he said, in one of those rare moments of pride in one of his children. “Now get your ass down in the basement.”

Over the next few years I attended many of the meetings, occasionally taking my father along, but the only thing that interested me in Mensa was the various speakers they had every month, such as authors Isaac Asimov and Jim Quinn. I also realized, with a quick calculation, it wasn’t all that exclusive an organization, as there were over four million potential members. I should note that my IQ score actually put me in the top one percent—the top half of Mensa. I did however maintain my membership for many years and it did help my career. I was hired for my first real job out of college by another Mensa member.

As an epilogue to the story, one day—a decade later—I received in the mail an envelope from Mensa. I opened it to find my own certificate of recognition for ten years of continuous membership.