Thursday, 2/26

If I have to be a failure at something, at least I'm in good company.

Loraine and I were joking around the other night. She had been reading several articles about soccer players we follow, all of whom used to play in Germany, didn't have much success there, moved on, and became stars. However, the German press still invariably calls them “Bundesliga Transfer Flop (in this case, Atletico Madrid star Alexander Sorloth)", because no matter how successful they are now, they flopped when they played in Germany.

And, apparently, that's all that matters. They could be the greatest player in the world outside of the country and STILL be known in Germany as “Bundesliga Transfer Flop”...

Oh, those wacky, wacky Germans.

Anyway, the two of us got to talking about that German practice, and I started to think. That, as we all know, can be a dangerous thing, and I was soon wondering how the German press would describe me, in the extremely unlikely event that they would have to make snide fun of me. I mean, I know I would never be “Bundesliga Transfer Flop”, but what WOULD be my biggest failure in life, the one that they could tag me with?

How about “High School Math Flop Jim Koski”?

I hope this doesn't sound bad, but after Loraine and I were joking around I started to run the concept of “failure” through my brain. What endeavors have I attempted and totally flopped at in my life? Well, I couldn't come up with any. I mean, there have been things I've tried and didn't totally succeed at, but was there anything at which that I totally failed?

Thankfully, there's always high school math.

I often joke that I'm in broadcasting because I suck at math, a joke that's actually common among people in this particular field. In all honesty, I don't suck at all math; addition, multiplication, and fractions don't bother me at all. But when you get past algebra, into geometry and trigonometry and calculus?

Well, then, I really AM a “flop”.

I took all those classes back in high school, managing to limp through them with grades no higher than, uhm, a C-. And aside from a little basic algebra used when trying to upscale or downscale the size of recipes, I've never used geometry or trigonometry or calculus in the thousand years since I took the classes. That, I guess, proves two things—that unless you're an engineer of some sort you probably won't use any math in your every day life, and that, if you're like me and took the classes anyway, you'll have two lasting effects thanks of it--

You'll probably go into a career field that has nothing to DO with math and, in the event that the German press needs something with which to label you as a flop, you're good to go.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com), high school math flop.