A Magazine-Style Quiz That Offers Real Insight

Growing up I always loved to take those quizzes one finds in teen magazines about “What Kind of Student Are You?”, or “What Type Of Boy Should You Date?”, or “Find Out How You Should Spend Your Weekend!”. I would always eagerly answer each question hopeful that this quiz would provide me with useful information on what my future husband would look like, or the music I should like to be more popular, or how to talk to people without them walking away.

But, my answers would either be too distributed to put me squarely in one category (“If you’re mostly Bs, you should try camping!”) or would reveal no exciting new information about my personality (“You’re creative! Why not try art or writing?”). I was always frustrated that the quizzes seemed to indicate that I couldn’t love camping AND the beach, or be the artsy girl AND the sporty girl. There never seemed to be any room for overlap and while these magazines always screamed BE YOURSELF!, they always offered tips for how to look like everyone else and fit into a neat category – like we can each identify with one Spice Girl only; you don’t get to be posh and crazy.

Based on a conversation my family was having around the dinner table last night, I decided to create a new personality quiz that will help you discover hidden talents you didn’t know you possessed, in addition to magically providing the solutions to all your problems. Rather than relying on a Myers-Briggs or temperament test, I wanted to provide my readers with a useful quiz that relies on the easy and familiar magazine Q&A format, while providing top-notch psycho-babble to help you truly and deeply understand yourself. Let’s begin!

Everyone is hungry, all your dishes are dirty, and all you have in your house is flour, two sips of milk, and a small container of yogurt with chia seeds you bought with a coupon, but no one will try. Do you:

• A. Order pizza.
• B. Serve everyone a warm gruel of flour and chia yogurt.
• C. Dig up earthworms for “pasta night”.
• D. Weep bitterly for the rest of the night.

Your van has broken down. You’ve made it to the side of the road but the van is clearly leaking something and won’t restart. It’s dark, starting to rain, and someone in the backseat needs to go potty. You first thought is to:

• A. Call roadside assistance with your cell phone and hang tight.
• B. Cry and pull the emergency flask out of your purse and send your kids to go running into the dark woods next to the shoulder.
• C. Flag down a motorist and steal his car to make a get away.
• D. Wonder who is in the backseat having a bathroom crisis when you drove to the store alone???

Your husband said he’d be home two hours ago and now you’re late for your monthly girls night out. He’s not answering his phone and your youngest has just set a fire in the bathroom. Your next step is to:

• A. Text your friends and let them know you’re not coming. Put out the fire, put the kids to bed early, and give your husband the silent treatment when he gets home.
• B. Put out the fire, put on a movie, leave for the girls night and hope for the best.
• C. Send the kids to your neighbor’s, let the fire consume the house, and lay booby traps in the driveway for your husband’s car.
• D. Steal your neighborhood ice cream truck, fill your home with soft serve. Give your kids spoons. Invite your friends to your house for all you can eat ice cream. Smell like hot fudge for a week.

A train left your town at 3:01 a.m. going 90 mph. A train from the next town over left ten minutes later going in the same direction at 84 mph. If the station they’re both headed for is five miles from your house, how long will it take you to help your children with their school work this week?

• A. You will work carefully with each of your children every night for a total of 203,105,965 hours of homework assistance.
• B. Your head hurts.
• C. You drink too much.
• D. You don’t believe in this damn Common Core and can we please go back to chalkboards and dunce caps and cursive?!?!

Your child is addicted to Pez candy and Fortnite. You host an intervention at your house and the therapist your spouse hires to help is your ex-boyfirend from high school. He proceeds to hit on you in the middle of the intervention. You respond by:

• A. Offering your child a supportive hug and then leaving the room so as to not further distract anyone from the purpose of the meeting.
• B. Tell your husband to prove his love to you and his family by engaging in a freestyle rap competition against your former flame right then and there.
• C. Offer everyone tea laced with a sleeping potion and quietly slip away into the night.
• D. Suffer in silence during the intervention, but later that night go to his house and place a taxidermied goat in his living room for him to find the next morning. He’ll know what it means…

Your kids want a dog. Your husband wants a dog. You hate dogs. To compromise you:

• A. Get a dog.
• B. Get an angry, but friendly, rabbit.
• C. Mount a deer head above your bed and sleep more.
• D. Study for your doctorate in philosophy.

Your family is on vacation in an exotic new location but of course, now, when you’re miles away from all your large garden utensils, the zombie apocalypse has finally broken out. To stay alive and survive your family will:

• A. Become zombies.
• B. Scream loudly and run in opposite directions, against all the training you’ve given them, and become zombies.
• C. Lock the door of your room, play a lively game of Scrabble and hope for the best.
• D. Cut scene to everyone walking slow mo out of an exploding hotel wearing gritty expressions as zombie body parts drop around them from the sky.

Mostly As: You are a disgruntled tree. Why don’t you say something tree? But you won’t. And we’re supposed to tolerate you because you provide us with things we need like oxygen. Get over yourself. Tomorrow you could be a table; take the time to live fully in the moment-today!

Mostly Bs: You are a fish with legs. You started trying, and giving a damn, but then something happened and you died a little inside. You lack motivation but inside there’s still a spark alive! Feed it, and turn that ember into a hunka, hunka burning love for something!

Mostly Cs: You are an undisturbed layer of silt at the bottom of a plastic kiddie pool. No one quite understands you, or gets what you’re made of, and the slightest agitation will tear you up inside. But you’ve got patience and persistence and in times of crisis, everyone wants your cool level head leading their team.

Mostly Ds: You are a forgotten Marvel superhero in tights. The decreased circulation to your toes means you’re often in pain, but you manage to channel your frustration into either incredible feats of strength and bravery, or the destruction of major metropolitan areas. You prefer to shop for your necessities in Wal-Mart at midnight like a normal person, but duty means more often than not you’ll be found in the middle of a chaotic storyline, filled with plot holes, just waiting for the person you love the most to slowly die.

A mix of all the letters: You are a hobo. Jumping trains and traveling across the country have given you an adventurous spirit and a few less teeth. The wrinkles all over your face tell a rich story of love, the power of following dreams, plus a lack of hygiene and family connections. Nothing can stop your free spirit except the blade of another crazy hobo. But if you survive that, you can survive anything!

How’d you do? Do you feel like you gained some new self awareness?? Let me know in the comments below. Then write your own post and link it up! Be sure to include a link back to this post so your readers can find the rest of the Quick Takes. I look forward to reading your posts!