You know that kid that seems to dream in color? The one who would rather read National Geographic than Green Eggs and Ham? The kid who actually looks forward to piano lessons, but beats himself up when his stupid left hand won’t do what it’s supposed to do? The one who was advanced developmentally and academically, who corrected his kindergarten teacher that the so-called “rectangle” she had modeled for the class with popsicle sticks and tape was actually a parallelogram, and for that matter, was actually a rhombus, because it had four equal sides, but not four equal angles? And she put him in the corner of the decidedly rectangular classroom, which was fine with him because he snuck a book over there and read it to himself and was content with being alone? And speaking of alone, he realized at an early age that being the best at everything meant being alone, because there was no silver medal in real life when it came to one-on-one competition, and sure, those T-ball games were fun to win, but pointless because he couldn’t control the rest of the team, although he plotted to devise a way to do so? His teacher and his piano instructor and his parents and his little brothers think he’s a genius, that he “has a gift.” But him? Well sure, everything up to this point has been pretty good work, but he can be faster, smarter, cooler, better. The best.
That was me.
On the outside, as far as the rest of my world was concerned, I was a bright kid with high interest in a multitude of subjects. I played fair, took care of my younger brothers, listened to my parents, ate all my vegetables. As days turned to school years, I added activities: Boy Scouts, Little League, saxophone lessons and jazz band, student government. And in each of these, I excelled, I developed leadership skills and asserted myself with the quixotic mix of authority and authoritarianism that only a child can truly master. I was happy, or so it would seem.
But within me, there was a burning darkness, and it fueled a passionate desire to excel, to champion, to beat anyone and anything at everything. I loved learning for the sake of learning, sure (nerd honorifics, notwithstanding), but my elementary taskmaster—ehh, teachers-- found a more extrinsic reward to which they attached my fancy, a mostly arbitrary and myopic assessment tool to which I became horrifically addicted.
Grades.
I loved grades. As, to be specific. A 100%, the mark of perfection, indicative that nothing else remained to be achieved, no other tenet or tidbit could be added to augment the superior masterpiece that was my homework, or my spelling test, or my art, or my report on ladybugs. I loved As so much, that I resolved to earn nothing but them.
So that’s just what I did. I earned As, lots and lots of As. The only time I didn’t earn 100% was when I got more than that, thanks to something amazing called “extra credit.” That was my routine, from first grade through fifth grade—get an A. Sure, the occasional question was missed, and my 100% fell to a paltry 96%, but I quickly identified my errant mistake, and successfully negotiated with my teachers to earn back the needed points to earn my 100%. I was, in short, a Grades Junkie.
And then, something happened in February of 1986 that forever changed me; I still recall it with a disquieting coldness on the back of my neck, a dryness on the roof of my mouth. Mrs. Wheeler, the first teacher I ever had that actually challenged me to learn things I hadn’t known for two years previous elected to give our class a Friday pop quiz.
Pish posh… I’d aced these before. My dad taught me all my English grammar one long night over a chess board in 3rd grade when neither of us could sleep, so that wouldn’t be a problem. Math? Bring it on… my Grampa used a cribbage board to teach me mental arithmetic that would make Archimedes pause. Science? I’d already finished reading the science textbook before Christmas, and considered it a reprehensible assemblage of miscreant part-facts and half-truths about geology, meteorology, and biology.
History, well jeez, I…. history. Not my strong suit.
“Put everything away, and take out a pencil,” barked Mrs. Wheeler. If you think about it, that’s sort of a paradox, to put everything away and take out a pencil, but I don’t remember saying anything about it to her. I was too busy trying to remember the history reading assignment from last night that I had failed to read.
All these years later, I can’t remember for the life of me what that quiz was about. I just remember reading through the questions, each more mysterious than the next. I had never experienced this situation before: Needing to know, and not knowing what was needed. I felt my face getting hot, my eyes watery and burning. My racing heart was in my throat… no wait, that’s vomit! I took off like a shot from my seat in the back of the classroom, out the door, and straight to the bathroom.
Within minutes, I was in the office, reduced to a sick, tearful mess, incapable of continuing for the school day. Mom came and picked me up, took me home. She tried to ask me what had happened, but I couldn’t find the words any easier than I was able to find the answers to those history questions. Instead I just sputtered sentence fragments and tears, shaking in a bewildered state of apoplectic self-loathing. Straight to bed, self-assigned no dinner. Mic drop. Acker out….
In the darkness of the Saturday morning that followed, around 5:00 A.M., Mom shook me awake from what seemed an endless nightmare. Like all moms, she had the ability to demand with great authority while whispering so as not to wake my brothers, asleep in the Hooverville of bunk-beds that was our shared room. With a curling finger, she motioned for me to follow her. I dragged my blanket behind me through the house, following her to the front porch of our Pasadena home.
Mom opened the door, put her hand on my back, and gently pushed me towards the outdoors. “Sit,” she said, and handed me a big, heavy hot mug of coffee. I pulled my knees up under my chin, tucked the blanket around me on that cold February morning, and took a long sip. I felt the warmth move into my chest behind my heavy heart, and I clutched the mug with both hands, trying to keep my fingers warm. And there we sat in the darkness and the silence of a Pasadena morning, broken only by the occasional passing of a big rig on the freeway a few blocks away.
It so happens that my family’s front porch faces east. As time passed, the black of night changed to a deep purple. Then violet, then dark blue. Red, orange, yellow…. And the sun peeked over the sharp edge of the San Gabriel mountains, brilliant and clean in the cloudless sky. My mom, who for the last hour and a half had remained silent and motionless, now stood, and put her arm around my shoulders.
“You see, Ben?” she said, meaningfully, “no matter what, the sun will always rise the next morning.” Then she kissed my tear-stained cheek, and walked back into the house, leaving me on the porch to contemplate the obviousness and the complexity of her words.
Since that day, life has sent me my share of Friday pop quizzes. Luckily, I've remembered to take them all in stride; I’ve managed to remember—often in the darkness of the resultant tearful nights--that a sun will rise on a new day for me, and another opportunity will present itself. I may never fix yesterday, but today gives me another shot to do better… or maybe it just illuminates a new path through the mountains, the direct result of yesterday’s landslide.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful, Ben.