You only get one shot at genius. I learn this from Lynne Powers, a sweet retiree from Marina, and Bruce Dick, an owlish Department of Corrections teacher from Monterey, who are serving as test proctors. It is among of list of rules they are rattling off: “The Mensa qualifying exam cannot be retaken.”

So this is it. Gaining entry into the definitive society of super-smarties is a serious, pressure-soaked matter.

Today is Oct. 21, a sparkling late fall afternoon and national Mensa Testing Day. For the second local testing session of the afternoon, the bare conference room in New Monterey’s Rabobank building holds two test takers: Blaine Sutliffe, an IT director for Earthbound Farm in Salinas, and me, a pygmy genius at most, an IQ-test guinea pig at least.

At stake with these IQ tests is access into Mensa’s 100,000-strong international clique, a land of mutual congratulation and puzzle marathons reserved for people that test out in the top 2 percent of the population. Cole Sadler, who I find reading a graphic novel and awaiting the bus outside Rabobank, wants in for the opportunites.

“It might open new doors in my life,” the bartender, philosophy major and professional dancer says. “There are certain jobs where maybe they want higher IQs. I know I have one.”

Dick and Powers say that the club holds regular potlucks and events, and offers a nice social outlet with interesting people. “Mensa people are very willing to express thoughts and ideas,” Powers says. “They aren’t idle. And they really like games.”

“We take Travel Scrabble just about everywhere unless very inappropriate,” Dick elaborates. “Like a funeral.”

The qualifying exam is two tests in one, starting with the classic workplace-popular Wonderlic, a blistering set of logic, verbal, geometric and intuition questions that increase in difficulty and number too many to be completed in the allotted 12 minutes.

Sutliffe and I plunge in. Before we know it, a stern Dick—whose bespectacled gaze lay heavy on me throughout much of both tests—is instructing us to put down our pencils.

We are onto the Mensa Admissions Test. Before we start, Dick summarily confiscates my scratch paper, where I had been absent-mindedly jotting notes on the experience.

“No notes until the appropriate section,” Dick says.

The second test proves a whole other animal—a gauntlet of diverse, mostly transparent, entirely demanding five- or six-minute exercises. I begin to question the intelligence of my undertaking such a head-heptathlon after a birthday blowout for my best friend the night before.

One section is an intriguing spare-change game: We have to calculate which combination of coins from a list of combos would add up to the total listed. There are dozens to do in just minutes.

A few sections are less sensical on the surface, with a drawing of an object followed by a series of other drawn objects. Our task is to quickly determine which objects are the most similar. As Dick’s monotonal instructions threaten to further blunt my already dull wits, I look past the example to the questions beneath and begin making notes on which drawing is the best answer.

In another section the challenge is to determine which drawing is the opposite of the figure drawn, which seems easy enough until you’re required to select the opposite of a something like a toaster and your choices include animals and shrubs.

By the time we hit a more traditional section of math and word problems, I am firing on all neurons. Algebra materializes almost magically in my mind at opportune moments. Calculations click. Soon Dick signals the end of the test and I scribble in the final bubble. My pencil continues to dance on the page promisingly through the vocabulary section. Midstream, I even have enough gray matter left over to daydream briefly about the genius-induction ceremony, a glorious ritual draped with bunting and ego.

With the penultimate section finished, I am a walk-in-the-park question-and-answer section away from coronation. I am essentially a made Mensan.

But then Dick switches his monotone from cracklingly dry to awkwardly compassionate.

“Sorry for the embarrassment, if there is any,” he tells me. “But I have to take your test. I saw you starting the test when I was reading the instructions. And you answered a question when I said put down your pencils.”

Dick then bluntly rejects my request to be allowed to take the final section, pulling the test booklet across the table with a disapproving scowl.

Powers gamely reminds me that my Wonderlic score could still qualify me—so I am logically expecting their call in a week. But I plan on politely declining membership—and it has nothing to do with the prospects of playing Scrabble with Bruce Dick. I’ve simply come to terms with the realization that I volunteered for an hour-plus timed test on a storybook 85-degree Saturday afternoon. Genius material I am not.