Household Word: This is Only a Test

My oldest son is a high school senior. He’s dreaming of where he wants to go to college, and I’m fantasizing about where he might be accepted. He’s taken the SAT and gotten his scores. Let’s just say we won’t be visiting Harvard. Actually, his test scores were pretty good, but I’m wondering whether he could have done better, and it’s driving me crazy.

Maybe if the tests hadn’t been scheduled for the morning after Matrix Reloaded opened at our local theater, he might have been more focused. Maybe if I had made him scrambled eggs and bacon instead of a bowl of Capt’n Crunch™ for breakfast, he would have felt more alert. Maybe we should have hired a tutor or signed him up for one of those test prep classes. Or maybe I should have begun grooming him for the SATs before he even entered high school.

I knew I should have bought the Stim-Mobile. Those popular black and white crib mobiles were just gaining popularity when I was pregnant with Mr. 630 Math. They are supposed to help babies focus, to recognize patterns and possibly enhance basic math skills. Instead, when my son was born, I hung pastel plastic bunnies over his crib. Who knows? If I hadn’t been such a slave to nursery decor, he might have eked out a few more points on the spacial reasoning section of the Math SAT.

If only college admission offices would take a look at my son’s Apgar scores. Those were perfect. Sure, his scores were better than those of the average American high school student (1020), but not good as my neighbor’s kid’s (1550). That irks me, because I’ve driven that kid to soccer for years, and he doesn’t seem like a genius. In fact, he always forgets to say “Thanks for the ride.” I assumed that he was rude, but since his mother bragged about his test scores, I now know that he’s simply preoccupied with logarithms and Latin roots. Yet, despite his incredible test scores, his parents are hiring private tutors and spending hundreds of dollars in a quest for the elusive perfect 1600 test score. It’s crazy and it’s highly contagious. Right now, I have a full-blown case of Standardized Achievement Test jitters.

“The registration deadline for the October test is next week,” I gently remind my son. “It’s the last chance to up your scores. There’s even time to hire a tutor.”