It’s November. We can see the signs by the apparatuses that heat and cool our houses as they struggle to maintain a comfortable climate indoors: cooling one minute and warming the next. That works so long as you have one of those modern units that do the job automatically. You notice, most often, only when the bill comes due.
But if like me, you live in an old house that cools you with an AC that hangs out of a window and a heater that hangs out nearby, pumping out heat on its own or, on days like the last few, sometimes both running at the same time, thereby letting me pay two bills at once for a climate that is both warm and cold, depending on where I’m hanging out.
Both units are doing their jobs well enough, I guess, but creating comfort they are not.
Puts me in mind of an incident long ago, tucked away in the creepy, cobweb lined recesses of my brain where lives a mouse-nibbled file labeled “High School.” Somewhere in there, there’s this memory of a debate tournament at some other school, I’ve no idea where, and the question we were debating was which was better - our American system of education versus the British system. Our system was divided into High, Junior, and Elementary schools, with everyone studying the same subjects, except for some very important exceptions: machine shop and FFA was for boys, training them to be mechanics or farmers; and home economics for us dainty girls who would doubtlessly need to know how to sew, cook, and do laundry in case we managed to get married or sought a job as a maid or secretary. In both cases, it was all we’d likely be good for. Classes like composition, chemistry and such were just filler, to keep those aggravating smarty-pants from getting bored. In chemistry, the boys were building rockets and the girls were watching the boys. God forbid they wanted to know anything about chemistry. In art, as I recall, we girls were handed some clay and told to “make something,” while the boys gathered at the other end of the room and discussed the art of deer hunting.
In Britain, it was different. There, students were lumped together like us from elementary school until about the middle of our junior high, when students hit 11 years of age. There, they were tested to determine not just what they knew or didn’t know, but also what they were good at, versus the things at which they mostly sucked. From that point on, they were grouped with other like-minded or like-skilled folks and trained at those things they were able to do and likely to succeed at. What a deal! It sounded great to me, differently abled as I was, knowing already that I didn’t fit.
We had just finished taking what were called aptitude tests. I was testing respectably in composition and music, horribly at math, but highest in, of all things, mechanics. I wasn’t surprised. I already had finagled a chemistry set and was doing experiments at home, including building my own damn rocket. I couldn’t get into chemistry because of my math scores. I had been tinkering with machinery since infanthood, and could read when I was three. My parents tried to steer me onto better paths. They got me a really nice dolly. I didn’t know what to do with her. But I digress.
So, despite my proven prowess at things mechanical, shop was forbidden to me. Also FFA, because I lived in town and so couldn’t demonstrate my farming abilities with a flock of chickens or a calf to raise, and show at the fair. And banned from the shop I couldn’t very well build a wagon or a manure spreader.
So, as a compromise, they made me take debate. It didn’t mark all the boxes, but it would do. Kept me out of the principal’s office. I had already bullied my way into the 1960s equivalent of honors English, despite my mediocre grades in math again and was, much to their chagrin, beating the socks off the probable top ten. Oddly, I was good at telling stories.
So, here I was at this tournament, arguing with this guy who fancied himself a patriot: all things American swell, all things British inferior and unacceptable. I could agree with him to some degree. After all, I had gotten terribly offended by Russia’s Sputnik, the first ever satellite shot into space. I’m sorry, but that just wasn’t possible! After all, everybody knew that everything important had happened in America first, or was invented by Americans, or, well, everybody knew we were just best, that’s all. Now here I was having to argue the other side, because I knew that in a British school system, I would fit right in. Somewhere in that mash-up there would be a place for me.
Now don’t misunderstand me. I had no wish to be a boy. I just didn’t exit a Tom Mix movie determined to marry Tom Mix. I didn’t want to Be Tom Mix. I just wanted the white hat and the horse. Even though I didn’t yet know the word. I wanted the privilege, pure and simple. The freedom to choose my own path and make my own way on it. I was absolutely with the Brits.
But this guy was really good. And he was scoring points, arguing that even though outstanding students had to wait for the slower ones to catch up and missing their chances at progress, the more mediocre folks were, on the average, profiting. But what about those who could go higher, farther? Why did they have to be punished? I realized I was no longer arguing for the British. I was arguing for me.
“It’s not fair,” I said
“Yes, but on the average,” he stressed.
Finally, I said in this totally smarty-pants voice, “Are you saying that a person with one foot on a hot stove and the other on a cake of ice would be, on the average, comfortable?”
I don’t remember who won the debate. I do remember that day vowing to never let myself be comfortable, whatever the cost. It has made every difference in my life worth mentioning. If I have to put up with some elderly efforts to moderate the temps in my elderly house, I guess elderly me can cope. You don’t want to get too comfortable, you know?
