Here's something that every mildly smug, middlingly successful person should do: Take one of those standardized education tests, and wipe that grin off your face. You'll never leave your own terrorized inner child behind again.

I'm not certain what these tests are designed to gauge, but after taking one last week I'm quite certain that it didn't involve any of the learning I've accumulated over the years since I left high school.

For one thing, there wasn't anything about the price of milk at Safeway or the price of gas at Costco, things that score high on my personal IQ. There wasn't anything about the latest John Grisham book, which I've been reading for weeks. In fact, there wasn't anything about anything I know about.

Instead there were a lot of questions like this:

(3x + 2) (2x - 5) = ax· + kx + n. What is the value of a - n + k ?

(Disclaimer: I just made that up. I had to because at least three times I had to attest — once in my own cursive writing — that I wouldn't tell anyone the questions or answers. As if.)

Through the miracle of modern testing procedures, I could report my exact scores to you within a few minutes of finishing the test, but I won't in order to protect my self-esteem. Let's just say I did OK on English and so poorly on math that if I was still in the seventh grade I probably could singlehandedly be responsible for my school falling under federal receivership.

I could have studied beforehand, but I figured nothing was going to help erase 40-plus years of neglect. Instead, on the night before my 8:30 a.m. exam I went out for beers with an old friend who had just blown into town, got home after midnight and woke up bleary-eyed and dehydrated.

Then there was the whole ID problem. Having just lost my wallet and unable to find my passport in a morass of old party pictures and other less important papers, I was without a valid government-issued picture identification. Long story short: Fortunately there's a satellite city hall license renewal station that opens at 8 a.m. just a block away from the testing center.

I'm not making excuses, though. I took the tests and now I'm taking my lumps. Besides, it could have been worse. I might have been taking one of those preemployment psychology tests required these days if you want to work for Wal-Mart or practically anywhere else where the stakes are about $8 an hour. These probing, incisive questions put the education process to shame: