{"id":89760,"date":"2015-09-14T16:06:11","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T20:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=89760"},"modified":"2015-09-14T16:06:11","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T20:06:11","slug":"sagely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/14\/sagely\/","title":{"rendered":"Sagely"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

If you know a lot of the words in this thing, you\u2019re probably at least sixty years old.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m a little too old, I think, to know how to really waste time on the Internet. I do it, of course, but I don\u2019t think I do it properly<\/em>: I tend to stay in my rut, visiting the same couple of sites every time, answering the same set of questions. Has there been a world crisis? Is there a vintage oatmeal wrap coat on eBay? Has some foolish tourist made the mistake of asking where to eat in Little Italy on that Manhattan foodie restaurant board? After that, I just sort of sit there, staring blankly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, like many old people, I am susceptible to the carnivalesque lures of online blandishments\u2014clickbait, I mean. Why yes, I do<\/em> want to know what Jane Austen character I am! I had no idea these former child stars were married? I\u2019ll<\/em> be the judge of that, sir! And when a link to some quiz site, styled of course in Comic Sans, asked if they could guess my age by my vocabulary, well, I thought I\u2019d take them up on it. <\/p>\n

I knew they\u2019d think I was old, of course. But I must say, that even by the standards of robot interrogation, this quiz made very little sense. How they could deduce anything from questions like \u201cWhat GRE word describes you?\u201d or \u201cWhich antonym for sad do you use?\u201d (Options: happy, elated, blithe, jubilant, ecstatic.) In a sense, it was a good test, in that you weren\u2019t sure what they were looking for: it wasn\u2019t like a quiz in a teen magazine, where one answer clearly marked you out as a goody-goody, another as a sociopath, and a third as the well-balanced ideal. This one forced a certain honesty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And,\u00a0clearly, they were doing something right, because this was their verdict:<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You Are 68<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve studied many languages, providing you with plenty of ways to express yourself. You are storyteller and people love to listen to you. Your voice is full of wisdom and your vocabulary is old-fashioned and immaculate.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, that\u2019s true, I thought, give or take thirty-five years. I am<\/em> a storyteller.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just to experiment, I decided to take the quiz again, this time choosing what seemed to me the most ludicrous answers. I said my favorite \u201cswear word\u201d was cunt\u2014<\/em>before I\u2019d been forced to choose\u00a0damnit <\/em>(sic)\u2014and that my favorite term for sex<\/em> was bone<\/em>. Drunk<\/em> became swacked<\/em>\u2014a word I have never heard\u2014and my preferred synonym for wise<\/em> was suddenly sagely<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I had never felt more alive. Who was I impersonating? Somewhere in the world, did this brain really exist? What were the right<\/em> answers\u2014and what did it all mean? It was like being under the power of arbitrary ancient deities! When an adverb served as an adjective, did anything matter in the world, really?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here is what they said. The emphasis is mine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You Are 45<\/span><\/p>\n

You are mature and the words you use reflect that. You have a polished voice and a refined vocabulary. You are established and educated. When you speak, people listen. Essentially, you are a language master<\/strong>. You enunciate, you have perfect grammar, and you rarely curse.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0I still choose to believe that I am, indeed, an Elizabeth Bennet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a little too old, I think, to know how to really waste time on the Internet. I do it, of course, but I don\u2019t think I do it properly: I tend to stay in my rut, visiting the same couple of sites every time, answering the same set of questions. Has there been a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[2480,13793,19425,19424,3203,13638,2393],"class_list":["post-89760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-age","tag-quizzes","tag-sagacity","tag-sagely","tag-vocabulary","tag-wasting-time","tag-words"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThey Tried to Guess My Age By My Vocabulary. 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