LIFE: Perfection

This week's Sports Illustrated has a Tom Verducci article on Rogers Clemens. It's a good read. It paints the picture of a person so dedicated to the art of perfection, that he can convince himself nothing of a desultory nature has ever happened to him, nor that he has done anything wrong. He apparently sleeps quite well at night.

In a way, I understand that.

I've asked other people, but only a few seem to have approached competition like Roger does. I'm one of them. Even extending to tests and exams while I was in school.

In all of my years of schooling, I always went into a test EXPECTING to get perfect. Didn't dawn on me that it might not happen. Even subjects that I wasn't a straight A student in, I expected them to ask the questions from the 80 percent or so that I did know. Of course I was going to get 100 per cent. Or better. There was that 104 I scored in Geography one year, but that's a story for another day.

Math was my major in high school. I took advanced math and then later, all three branches for my final year. Throw in computer sciences and data processing and I had nine credits in math. Scored just about perfect across the board, except for one niggling little problem. Couldn't multiply two times two and always get the right answer. THREE times in some 20-odd exams, my perfect mark was marred by making a mistake with that very calculation. Maybe, if I'd stayed past the 20-minute mark and proof-read the exams, I could have earned my perfect mark, but I honestly didn't think it was worth the time. Imagine my shock. Each time.

For me, math was fun and was easy. Mostly, things were logical and added up. On the other hand, I had less success with languages. Still, I figured I'd get perfect on the exams, no matter the struggles I had. And this despite the fact that English was actually the second language I ever learned. I was a Canadian Air Force brat and spent my early years in Baden-Baden in Germany, talking mostly with a native baby-sitter. But German wasn't a strength in high school and neither was French.

I got adequate marks, but dropped German as quickly as possible for more math courses. French was pretty much a breeze the first year. The second year, I met up with Frank Marsellus. He was a gnommish man who terrorized students mostly. I didn't enjoy his company and it was my own fault I was even in his class. I had been given the computer work to assign students to classes during the summer between grades nine and ten. One rule was you couldn't have a class with your home room teacher. But what's power for, unless to abuse it? So I diddled the program logic and got the same home room teacher as I had for French. It was supposed to be the very nice, easy-marking Miss Lindsay. But I transposed two numbers and was comported to hell.

Mr. Merciless. I called him that to his face. He let it slide and just came after me with bulldogged determination. When the first semester was done, I had a FAILING mark in the class. The only failing mark in all my years in academia. Acknowledging this small chink in my confidence, I lobbied for, and received, permission to transfer to grade eleven physics. The teacher had given me the first term coursework and I was expected to take a proficiency test the first week back from the Christmas break. I was already most of the way through the extra work when I approached Marsellus to get him to sign off on the transfer.

"Why are you transferring?"

"Cuz I failed. No sense continuing on with something that I don't like and just drags the grade average down."

"No, monsieur, you did not fail."

"Of course I did. I know exactly what I got mark-wise, and it isn't half of my math marks. I can do THAT math."

With a smile bisecting his face, he looked at me and told me I had overlooked "Participation marks."

Now, truth be told, any class I didn't feel like learning in, usually stopped as I tried to make a comedy routine out of the subject of the day. It was habit not to let ANYBODY learn, if I wasn't in the mood. Selfish? Yeah. I also knew whatever classroom participation measurement system in place, I scored worse on that, than on the exam.

Unfortunately, with my newly crafted C+ in the course, I no longer had legitimate cause to skip grades and courses. I was well and truly stuck in French for the remainder of the year.

On the other hand, Marsellus turned out to have a bent for computers (this was in the mid 70's). And he knew of my interest in Math. So, he started teaching me the parallels between math and French. It actually opened up the subject to me. I progressed to a solid B in second term before scoring an A in the final term. While still the worst mark on my report card that year, I was fairly happy until getting my final grades from Marsellus. It was simply a B+.

"Remember those marks I gave you back in the first term? Couldn't let you keep them for the full year!" He cackled at his own little joke, while I seethed. It turned out, he believed I could learn French, and my own ego agreed with him, even though my conscious mind complained throughout.

And then I took French the next year.

Turns out Frank Marsellus was the best teacher I ever had in high school. The only one to really challenge me. Hated him every second along the way, but he taught around that.

I dropped French the next year after a week. Soon as I figured out I wouldn't be able to use the math magic to do the translation since the teacher started off the course by saying, "As of this minute, there will be no English spoken in this classroom."

Couldn't get perfect, couldn't stay. That's how it goes with those that believe in perfection.