Special Purpose

I had a music teacher in high school who once paid me what I thought was a beautiful compliment.

I liked Mr. Light and was hungry for his compliments (I was starved for compliments from authority figures in gen.; wait, I still am), so when he said, “You know what, Brianna? You are at the absolute top of the bell curve.”

I flushed and tingled, tried not to betray my delight. Bells are lovely things, aren’t they? Elegant and musical. And here I was, a part of one. I may have had “a weight problem” and “low emotional intelligence” and “poor work ethic,” but now I was also the peak of something beautiful — a bell curve.

Noticing my pleasure, Mr. Light interrupted me before I got to graciously dismiss the compliment.

“Do you know what that means?,” he said, smiling, too.

Look at us goons.

Smilin’.

“It means you’re exactly average. You’re not close to the best in the room or the worst in the room. You’re just” — and he spread his hands, drawing an arc in the air and pointing to its center — “totally mediocre.”

And you know what he was right lol