The Bible is full of them, and some are pretty damn nasty. School is riddled with them, mainly to fill our young heads with knowledge of things we will never need again once we graduate. Then there's the driving test. First we learn how to pass the test, and once we've done that, we have to learn how to drive all over again in the real world.



But all of these examinations, however tricky, are nothing more than a mild warm-up routine for the greatest one of them all. The Pregnancy Test. The funny thing about the pregnancy test is that for a lot of people, for the first time in their life, they're actually desperate to fail. And even though they may have done absolutely nothing to prepare for this test, that in no way diminishes the chances of passing. It's also ironic that there seems to be plenty of evidence to show that the result of the test is likely to be the exact opposite of what people want.

The rookie assistant who has three too many cocktails and retires to the boardroom with the new secretary at the office Christmas party. The only one-night-stand you ever had, honest. The guy who got a really good deal on a vasectomy. The woman who ran out of the pill a couple of days ago but thought it would be ok. These are all people who you just know are going to be having a baby. It's a racing certainty. (I'm not including people who use the rhythm method, because they're just asking for it.)

However, the married couple who have been trying for a family for two years, including having sex at exactly 3:38 a.m. on the 17th day of the cycle; the woman who has let her biological clock tick down to the last few minutes; The guy who actually answered that e-mail promising abundant virility. These are the people who are almost doomed to failure.

Another interesting aspect is the test itself. A person is trying to find out if they are going to have a child, which for the latter group above is a momentous event. So this is a big deal, a potentially auspicious day, a ceremony with a true sense of occasion. What a pity then that a bunch of genius scientists (no doubt men) decreed that it should be spent in a bathroom peeing on a stick. How romantic is that? Couldn't we come up with something a bit more civilized?

Taking someone's temperature, which in the old days could mean you wouldn't be able to sit down for a couple of minutes, is now a sanitized `bleep' in your ear. Is there no corresponding dignity for a pregnancy test? And look at how you have to find out the verdict. You wait for some tenuous blue line to appear on a stick. I can buy a card for three bucks that sings me happy birthday, but to discover whether I've procreated the species I have to search for a thin blue line? Here's something else. Let's look at the mechanics of taking the test.

A woman has to sit on the toilet, put a little stick between her legs and try to pee on it. Why don't they make it really exciting and provide a blindfold in the box? If ever there was a test that was tailor-made for a guy, this would have to be it. Let me have a go. Hold the stick up high; further away; make it a moving target. I'll bet you I can hit it first time and still have enough ammo left to write my name in the snow. There should be a pregnancy test for men.

It's nothing more than a sneaky ploy to promote sales. You always see women buying pregnancy tests by the handful, as they know the first two or three are probably going down the toilet - literally. Who knows, maybe the scientists considered that the result could be so emotional, a woman had better be sitting down when she gets it?