My New Year's resolutions are pretty basic. Eat more apples. Get more sleep. Read more books. Enjoy more walks. Take fewer quizzes.
What's that? That last one isn't among your 2014 pledges? It's among mine, by golly.
When I say quizzes, it must be noted, I am not speaking about bi-weekly Portuguese spelling tests or monthly exams in advanced trigonometry.
I am not studying Portuguese. Or trig.
Too often, however, I am finding myself tackling Really, Really, Really Stupid Quizzes, the kind that float about Facebook on an hourly basis.
Last week, for instance, I succumbed. Yet again. Unable to resist the temptation, I took quizzes that invited me to determine my mental age (32), my favourite colour (puce) and the planet that most closely resembles my personality (Neptune).
Talk about Really, Really, Really Stupid.
Now I do not know who designs these quizzes, but it appears to me that it's open season where they're concerned. Come up with something bizarre - I came across one not long ago called What kind of narcissist are you? - and people will jump right in. By the ga-zillion.
Thing is, I do not need a quiz to tell me that my favourite colour is coral, not puce, and there is no planet that resembles my personality, since planets do not tend to eat apples, read books or take walks.
This year will be better. This year, gosh darn it, I vow to bypass the likes of that recently completed Really, Really, Really Stupid Quiz, which asked: What kind of vegetable are
you? For reasons that escape me, I plunged right in. I was asked all manner of questions. What time did I go to bed? What kind of cell phone did I own? What kind of dancing did I enjoy? (All veggie-appropriate inquiries, of course.) Turns out I am a Brussels sprout, which annoyed me to high heaven, given that I have tried Brussels sprouts only once (at age 18) and was so disgusted, have never eaten them since. A tomato or a cucumber I could have lived with. A Brussels sprout? Not a chance.
Stroll the Really, Really, Really Stupid Quiz circuit, and you're apt to be asked, among other things: What kitchen utensil are you most like? At one point, I would have clicked on Start and got the process going, but that changes from this day forward.
This year, I'll cut off the quiz entirely. I'll never know what utensil I am, but for now, I'll make it a knife.
