I'm Smarter than Nicole Kidman!

My Brain Age (according to More Brain Training by Dr. Kawashima): 23
Nicole Kidman's Brain Age (according to the commericals advertising same): 24

Take that, Nicole! You may be beautiful, blond and all the boys want to date you, but I'm smarter. Ha ha! Actually, it seems like high school all over again.

My addiction to More Brain Training happened like any addiction: slowly, without me really noticing. Now while I'm not quite at the point where I need to do brain training to get out of bed, it's not far from it.

The problem is that it offers daily validation as to my intelligence, and gives me a chance to improve it-- at least by the standards of the game. I doubt I'm smarter than when I first started my training and my "Brain Age" was 80. I mean, 80?? Had I completely lost my edge while I stayed home with Thing One and Thing Two?

So I relentlessly started training. Obviously, because I'm not THAT sad, I didn't apply myself to the task to the same degree as my marathon training in 2005. But I had to point to prove: Just because I'm not working, or "retired" as Thing One recently described it, does not mean that I have the brain of a geriatic.

This morning, after about a month of "training" I finally beat Nicole Kidman's score. However, the cynic in me also suspects that the clip was edited for commerical purposes. She is moving far too slow in those commercials to have a brain age of 24.

Thinking about what I knew when I was 24 (not much, frankly) versus what I know now (a book's worth), I can't understand how a younger brain age shows that you're smarter. How could a 24-year-old punk be considered smarter than a world-weary 38-year-old?

It doesn't compute. But I don't care: I'm smarter than Nicole! Validation for today has been attained.