Speaking of type A personalities....

So Inki likes to get stuff done. It's a very handy trait, valued both by her employer and her spouse.

I have my quirks too, though mine are a far sight less useful.

In the spring I took the official Norwegian as a second language examination, just in case I ever need to be able to document my competence in the language. It was a six-hour death march. The morning session wasn't bad -- there was a reading comprehension section with short answers, followed by a listening comprehension test and a grammar test. After lunch, though, we had two long essay sections to write: one was a recapitulation of an interview we heard, and the other required us to take a position and defend it on one of a few suggested topics. By the end my brain was so tired that I stuck to English the rest of the weekend.

The results came back a few weeks ago. Possible scores range from 150 (the score I'd get on an equivalent test in Mandarin) to 700 (indistinguishable from a well-educated native speaker) in intervals of 50. I didn't get 700; I only got 650, and it bothered me enough that I wrote to them and asked them to rescore my test, knowing all the while that I was being an ass but being unable to help myself. How hard was it to get 700? How many people got that score? I needed to know.

By all objective measures, 650 would be the right score for me. I can't tell anyone with a straight face that I am every bit as fluent in Norwegian as I am in English. If being "indistinguishable from a well-educated native speaker" is the standard for fluency, I may never get there purely because of my accent. Then again, by that standard, Henry Kissinger would not be considered fluent in English, and that would be patently absurd. Still, I had to know where I stood on the bell curve before I could internalize my feelings about the test. I just couldn't let it go.

This is the result of a dozen years of standardized testing in school: I didn't know how to feel about my score without a percentile to go with it.

Their response came last week in the mail, and I was hesitant to open it, wondering whether they would even try to conceal their contempt for my nitpicking. I wondered which salutation they'd use: "Dear Loser," "Hey Jerk-off," or "You Weenie."

I opened it, and it wasn't that bad after all. They told me there's only one guy in Norway with a 700 and that I should get a life. Actually, they put it much more nicely than that, which I appreciate, but at least now I can sleep at night, snug and warm in the 99th percentile.

As long as Inki lets me, that is.