When I Had the Nerve to Fail With Flair
Sometimes in life, the best way to win is to lose.
I am not the kind of person who would fail a test on purpose to make a point.
At the very least, I was not born to be this kind of person. Truly, I was born to obey. I entered this world ready to apply my tongue to every pair of leather boots and fine wingtips that passed by. Children are trusting by demand of nature — it comes with the territory when you’re tiny and the world is huge — but I can’t imagine that there were many who had the same faith in those big people as me. There I was, four years old, trying to figure out how anyone could as much as imagine breaking a rule and disappointing those big people who were so noble and benevolent.
Then came the day that the big people started to judge our intellectual merit, and while this may have been worrying for the others, for me it was just another chance to prove my fealty and worth. Where others dreaded tests, I almost anticipated them. There was never a time when I was worried about the contents of a grade card and there wasn’t anything “extra” about extra credit. I was the designated smart kid — like the ones from your own youth, the ones you resented more than was perhaps healthy.
And yet there I was, seventeen years old, staring at another one of those tests…
