You might have some preconceived notions about Mensa. “Like, this is what gets me through the rest of the year … A lot of us here have some flavor of neurodiversity, and it’s just really nice to be around people who get you.” It’s an organization she grew up in, where she’s made lifelong friendships. “Going to an AG, going to any Mensa event, it fills up my cup,” she said. They came because they think they are smart, they care deeply about a certain type of intelligence, and they feel most at home in a crowd of other high-IQ individuals.
Every single game ever invented was seemingly available to play, stacked neatly and organized alphabetically along the walls of the room - basics like Scrabble and Settlers of Catan, branded fare like Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, and dozens, if not hundreds, that I’d never heard of: Logan Stones, Instructures, Galaxy Trucker, and a simple card game called Set which Bakke and Whalen taught me how to play (and which I am now addicted to).Ībout 1,100 Mensans journeyed to the Reno area for this year’s convention, people old and young, conservative and progressive, rich and not so rich, cashiers, scientists, community activists, conspiracy theorists, BDSM enthusiasts, and straitlaced monogamists. The scent of cafeteria food permeated the air with undertones of stale cigarettes. The room was fluorescently lit, and featured brown checkered carpeting adorned with big orange and tan swirls. The 2022 Annual Gathering (AG, as Mensans call it) was Whalen’s first and marked the first time the pair met IRL. They met in a Mensa Gen-Y Facebook group shortly after, and became fast friends, texting each other every day. Bakke was hanging out with Christopher Whalen, a 35-year-old defense contractor from Omaha, Nebraska, who was admitted to the club in 2016. “I have a big brain,” she told the Register reporter, who noted that her IQ was 143, about 50 points higher than the average among people of all ages. A 1996 Orange County Register article about her admission to the high-IQ club revealed that she was conceived at a Mensa convention, and she hasn’t missed one since she became a member when she was three. In the designated game room at the Nugget Casino Resort in Sparks, Nevada, which was open 24 hours a day during this year’s Mensa Annual Gathering, I sat at a table with a woman named Kimberly Bakke, a 30-year-old purple-haired pastry chef and teacher from Las Vegas.
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