On Being a B+ Student

I’ve always been a B+ student. And over the years, I’ve learned to live with that. We’re not burned out, and we don’t burn out. Because we’re so close, close to greatness, and we’ve got hope. I bet Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were B+ students. But what do I know. I was never that great in history.

In fact, it’s not just in school where I’ve always churned out my B+. In Little League, I was one of the coordinated ones who wasn’t afraid of getting hit by the ball. As center fielder, I’d actually catch real fly balls. When a kid managed to hit a ball outside of the infield, I’d always call off my left and right fielders because I knew they’d drop the ball. Once I made a double play during a key game. Long fly to center, I caught it pedaling backwards, then nailed the ball to my catcher and best friend Loam who tagged out the kid trying to score from third.

But at the Home Run Derby in Nicasio, where’d we’d gotten all our parents and their friends to sign up to give money to the League depending on how far we hit the ball, my long fly ball hit the fence. The witnesses around the field all breathed a sympathetic “Ohhh”. I raised my 10 year-old eye brows, squinched my lips and walked back to the dugout. The ball was 3 inches from going over for a homer.

In eighth grade, I was one of the popular kids. High up on the food chain, I was among those who teased, praying I would never get teased. I destroyed people in 4 square and was one of the last kids to drop in slaughter ball. I had a top locker. As a result, I ran for Student Council Vice President, a perfect position for a B+ student. I even had a campaign manager, a kid named Robert, who was like me: close to greatness. After much thought, we decided on a campaign slogan: “I Dig Doug”. I heard a similar slogan once worked for one of our Presidents.

But I had a formidable challenger. Lorenzo. He was going out with the most popular girl at school, and she was running for Student Council President. They were to be the darling power couple. He was the school’s first “preppy”, dressed the part, and thus injected the thought in the student body that there was a world beyond the misty woods, the cows, the kelp, the dead skunk smell, the Toby’s Feed Barn hay trucks, and the dirty jeans of our young Northern Californian lives. Lorenzo had the elite student body locked up. I focused on the middle school outcasts. The kid who broke the seagull’s wing with a rock. The unpopular Coast Guard kids. The Mexicans. The kids that didn’t like Lorenzo. On Election Day, Robert’s mom called the school to say Robert was sick. I lost by one vote.

RC Cola. The 1980’s San Francisco Giants. Not quite enough hot water for a shower. All this near perfection was just fine by me. I graduated from high school (3.3 GPA) and college (3.2 GPA) and then proceeded into the world. My expectations managed, planning for the worst but always hopeful, looking at the horizon. I gradually came to realize that my B+ world view made me into an A+ traveler. Everything seemed to suit me pretty well. I was flexible. In fact, the hardest question for me to answer to this day is often “Tea or coffee?” Israeli Tex-Mex, Algerian wine, the bottom bunk in the youth hostel in Tangiers, brackish Egyptian beer. Nothing’s perfect, I’d cheerily remind myself, as an ominous gastrointestinal sensation began looming deep within.

Then I eventually got into this elite Arabic language program in Egypt. (I didn’t pass the entrance test the first time.) I lived with Chris, another hopeful soul whose world view was set on “stun”. Merrily we would explore the dirty streets of Cairo. After buying a little food for Lucy, the neighborhood bitch, and her two flea-ridden pups, we still had one dollar a day each to spend on our own food – two ta’amiya sandwiches for lunch, and a bowl of koshiri for dinner. The whole experience was pretty good. I’d give it a B+.

I moved to Tunis for work and I lived with a Tunisian family. In their kitchen, their caged and miserable parakeet considered me a possible key to his salvation. Weeks passed. I struggled with this dilemma. Should I creep in at midnight and free him? Would they kick me out of the home for taking away the family prisoner pet?

Ramadan passed. Then I thought of a solution. A B+ solution. I entered the neighborhood pet bazaar and sidled up to the bird merchant. After the bargaining, I went home with a new parakeet when the family was out, and I briefly introduced the two birds. Then, I slipped outside with the new parakeet to a secluded nook by a palm tree and set him free. The new parakeet flew in a B line to the lowest branch of the palmier. As the bird looked down upon me, I hoped I had created some sort of balance in the universe. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it allowed me to live with those Tunisians and turn a deaf ear to their sad parakeet.

Then I moved to Washington to make something of myself. I applied for a Government job, submitting my school transcripts that were filled with all the B+’s I’d gathered over the years. B+ was good enough for Uncle! I began my GS-7 job. I lived in an “efficiency” apartment in Washington. There, I had a mysterious neighbor, something along the lines of Boo Radley from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. Remember how Boo hid presents for the little girl in the hole in the tree? Each Sunday when I took out the trash, I found countless valuables placed next to the dumpster. (Important note: “next to” not “in”.) Wicker bookcases. A TV. New wine glasses. A decent table. Even a box filled with about 12 different kinds of unopened liquor.  

On the other hand, I lived in an alleyway. There was a constant, unknown source of heat emanating from the bathroom floor. My air conditioner had emphysema. And I had a $12,000 credit card bill. But looking back on it, I’d give Washington a B+, all things considered.

Then I was promoted to GS-9. I promptly moved to Takoma Park. I had my own parking space. I had a jolly, Polish boozer for a grounds keeper. Plus a vigilante lived in our midst. One night a car began blaring its medley of “ambulance”, “fire engine”, “police car” and “English police car” alarm cadences. Our vigilante hero stepped out into the darkness and shot four rounds from his hand gun into the engine block of the car, murdering it. We slept. A real police car came round the next day. Our hero was never identified. But on the down side, I lived a stone’s throw from the metro train, the Amtrak, and freight railway tracks. The sliding glass window shook when the MARC train from Baltimore came thundering through every morning at 6AM. ‘Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative’ is what Sinatra used to say. I’d give Takoma Park 8.5 out of 10.

Moving up the USG hierarchy, I moved to Suburbia, MD. I got a mortgage. Two parking spaces. I lived in a “town house” on “Mystic View Court Rd.” There was a fake lake. One of our neighbors talked to us. The front door of each house in the Mystic View cul de sac was painted in a unique, Home Owners Association-approved color. Mine was tangerine. But Suburbia, MD had cameras that zapped you and sent you expensive bills by mail when you burned a red light. It was a homogenous array of malls, drugstores, gas stations, and Bed Bath & Beyonds. There were many other fake lakes. These attracted alarming herds of defecating, but pretty- looking geese. Lorenzo would have loved it. I’m not complaining. It was actually a pretty nice place I guess.

Then Uncle sent me to work for Him abroad. In Qatar, green parrots flew free above date groves, playing in the air and robbing the date farmers below at will. In Dubai, a huge sea ray swam free 10 feet below me in the turquoise water of the Persian Gulf just before sunrise.

In the Hijaz, playful, wild baboons openly displayed their love (and desires) for one another, flaunting the Wahabi strictures of their gasping homo sapien cousins. In Jordan, a wild camel in full gallop stared at me with weathered eyes. In Kuwait, a school of a thousand fish swam in beautiful symmetry, their vitality in stark contrast with the dead sand and rock baking in the sun above water. In Bahrain, dolphins raced along the jetty and quickly breached in front of a massive oil refinery.

Several years passed.

I returned home briefly. I had a lunch in San Francisco by the water. The white wine was perfect. The company was enchanting. The weather balmy. A bold seagull blown in from the Pacific landed and stared at me with profound confidence. On leaving San Francisco by ferry, I turned back to see the city and found it suddenly engulfed in fog. It had disappeared. But a change had come over me. I suddenly knew B+ was no longer good enough.