Chapter 23: Show Business

Monday, October 1, 1984

In Chemistry, Paige and I got our first college exam back (though, of course, it was also anything but my first.) Mine had a nice big ‘58’ at the top, next to an A in a circle. Paige’s was a 56, with the same letter grade.

It turned out the A/B line for this test was at 48. We’d gotten our A’s relatively comfortably.

Paige told me later it was the lowest numerical grade she could recall getting on an exam in her life — even during her freshman year at Memorial when she was allegedly ‘a total fuck-up!’ Her parents were checking her grades, and a 56 would’ve gotten her locked in her room and put on bread and water. Of course, an A wouldn’t have, but no one at Memorial was that bad at writing tests.

During class, I found a notable glitch in the textbook. It was so glaring that I couldn’t believe that anyone who knew anything about chemistry had written it, much less that it had gotten past a single proofreader.

I pointed it out to Paige, and she nearly lost it giggling.

After class, I headed to the front of the classroom and told Dr. Johnson I’d found a glitch in the book.

“Oh?” he said.

I opened it and pointed.

He looked at the book, and specifically the phrase ‘the water atom,’ and began to chuckle.

“That ... that one is bad!” he said, still chuckling. “I’ll let them know.”

“Any thoughts on how it got there?” I said.

“Most likely, it was some foolish editor who ‘corrected’ the word ‘molecule’ to ‘atom,’” he said. “Still, it’s nonsense, and this is exactly the sort of thing they want us catching. So, good catch!”

It turned out that A&M’s first big celebrity act this year wasn’t a rock star, a Broadway artist, or anything of the like. It was an American institution: Bob Hope. We spent lunch talking about the show.

Hope was yet another icon that I’d never seen in my first life. To be fair, eighteen-year-old first-life Steve barely understood who Bob Hope really was. I hadn’t seen any of his signature films yet, and had barely heard much from his comedy routines.

Jas and Paige didn’t have that problem — they’d each watched a few of the ‘Road’ movies, at least. Angie, Mel, and Cammie were interested enough to want to go, particularly since tickets weren’t all that expensive. Hope was performing in ‘Jolly Rollie’ (G. Rollie White, the basketball stadium), and there would likely be plenty of seats.

That had us set for Friday night entertainment.

The other thing going on this week was ‘Howdy Week.’ There was a club formed around what had become a long-standing tradition. Everyone tried to go out of their way to say ‘Howdy’ to their fellow students, and the club sold t-shirts encouraging just that. We each bought one. For $4, why not?

The whole thing had started an idea bouncing around in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite get it into focus yet. Perhaps it would become more clear with time.

That afternoon, Cammie and I got our Introductory Accounting exam grades back. We tied, both getting much more traditional 98s on our test. We high-fived each other on the way out of class, which seemed to amuse some of our fellow students while possibly annoying some others.

Over dinner, everyone went over their first grades. The low was Cammie’s B+ on her physics test. With Mel scoring a solid A in the same class, plus Angie and Jasmine’s A’s in Biology, Cammie took a bit of ribbing. She took it good-naturedly, accusing the rest of us of being ‘nerds’ and therefore inclined to do better in hard sciences.

When we took that as a badge of honor, Cammie just let it go. Her grade was unlikely to cause her any trouble overall. She had plenty of time to improve her average, and physics was a nearly pointless elective for a business major. It wouldn’t matter any more to her — in terms of the direct subject matter, anyway — than chemistry would matter to Paige or me. We needed a natural science, those counted, and that was what mattered.

That, and that honors credit. That mattered, too!

Jas and I snuggled up as usual, her with her head on my chest, looking up at me in the dim light from the streetlights coming through the windows.

“It’s great, getting our grades back,” she said. “Especially since they’re good!”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling and hugging her.

“I know it’s not such a big deal to you,” she said, snickering just a bit. “But it is to me!”

“It’s ... complicated,” I said, after a bit of a pause.

“Tell me?”

“Remember, the reason I recognized Imposter Syndrome in you is because it’s in me, too. You never ‘get over it,’ or at least that’s how it’s been for me. Every class is an opportunity to finally be caught out as the imposter I’ve always been. By that, I mean that the little voice in my head keeps trying to tell me that. I mostly ignore it, but it’s still there.”

She shifted, sighing a bit.

“I guess ... it’s ... you’re so good at everything, I just...”

“That’s what most people think when they look at you, honey.”

She looked up at me, then blushed and shivered a bit.

“I ... okay. Yeah. Another thing I forget. We’re all so unusual...”

“We’re an exceptional group. Just based on National Merit, we’re in the top half of a percent of high school graduates. Plus, most of our fellow National Merit Scholars weren’t in Nationals in their chosen extracurriculars. We don’t see it because of who our friends are, and because Memorial had a hugely disproportionate number of National Merit kids. If Memorial was average, we would have had two or three, not over forty.”

She nodded a bit.

“That makes sense. I just ... it’s still...”

“It shuts up the voice a bit, and it feels good. I get it. I really get it.”

“Which makes me feel good. And like we fit together. I might have trouble with someone who couldn’t see why ‘just another A’ isn’t ‘just’ anything.”

“All of us get it, even the ones who don’t have Imposter Syndrome themselves,” I said.

“It occurs to me that Mama and Papa get it, I think. Maybe they have it, and maybe they don’t, but they never felt like I was weird for fretting over my grades.”

“Parents ... it’s harder, I think. There’s them having it, but there’s also ... well, my kids just weren’t as good at school as I was. They weren’t dumb, or slow, or anything like that, but they weren’t straight-A students or even close. I chose to take them as they were, not as I wanted them to be. My ex-wife ... she had trouble with that. She wanted them to be like her, academically speaking, while I wanted them to learn and be happy. We shoved much too much of that argument under the rug for way too long. If I had it to do over again...”

She chuckled, and said, “You, of all people, could have it to do over again.”

I shook my head.

“No,” I said, “I don’t think I could. I don’t think, even if I tried, I could wind up with her again. She ... I think she needed me to be who I was. A confident, secure guy with a dating history, one who perhaps knew he could do better, probably would’ve scared her off. I’d have to pretend to be someone completely different to have a chance, and Mom and Dad would sour that before things even got started.”

“Yeah.”

“And then ... I wouldn’t do it over again. What would be the point? Unless I could change who she was in the first year or so, how would that work? I’d go into every day knowing that our relationship was almost certainly doomed. Knowing that getting married was a bad idea, and that having kids with her was a very bad idea. How could that work?”

She nodded.

“Yeah, no, I get that.”

“For us ... I mean, first, I think all of that is a very good idea...”

She giggled and said, “Yeah. I know that. Very well, really!”

I chuckled along with her.

“Yeah ... but, beyond that, my point is that we’re fully looking to the future. There’s nothing to change, nothing to second-guess. We’re like every other couple — we have hopes and dreams, but the script is unwritten. I like knowing some big-picture things, both because we can use them and because maybe I really can make things better, for us and our kids and our family and friends but also for everyone. All that said, I’m glad I don’t know the script for any of our lives. I’m glad that I won’t walk into class, or work, or whatever, and know what’s going to happen.”

She nodded slowly.

“That’s ... I like that. I mean, I really like that! It’s not news, but it really puts things into perspective.”

“If I could have the best of both worlds and know where the ‘in sickness’ parts of things would be, sure, I’d maybe take that. It’d be great to say, ‘Hey, Jas, this icky thing is going to happen. If we do better now, maybe it won’t, or it’ll be a lot easier to treat.’ I’ve got that with my Mom, but that’s about it, and I don’t have it with you. Being ‘normal’ is fine, that way.”

“But maybe we are in the best of all possible worlds,” she said, giggling.

“Maybe we are. The best is the enemy of the good, though. I’m happy living in a really good world.”

“Me, too! Me very much, too!”

We kissed and then ... well ... the mood struck.

And it was very, very good.

Tuesday, October 2, 1984

When we got home, there was a message waiting on the answering machine. I played it and found that it was Jess calling. She asked for me to call back when I could, saying she would be at her dorm room the rest of the day.

When I called, a girl answered with a very chipper, “‘Allo! Who’s calling?”

“Steve Marshall,” I said. “Calling for Jess Lively.”

“Ah! She’ll be on shortly,” the voice said. “She’s said so much about you!”

We talked for a few minutes. I hadn’t realized that Jess’s roommate was British. She seemed nice.

After a bit, she said, “Ah, Jessica is ready now. Hang on!”

I heard the phone get put down, then picked up.

“Hey, Steve!”

“Hi, Jess!”

“How’ve you been?”

I chuckled. “I got a 58 back on my chemistry test today.”

“Oh, no! I can’t believe it!”

“Paige got a 56.”

“Good lord! What are you people doing?” she said.

“Getting A’s. The A/B cutoff on that test was a 48.”

“Are you serious? Who does that?!”

I said, “Our crazy chem prof. He really is a great guy, but he told us that he’s horrible at writing tests and he wasn’t lying.”

“That is on a one-hundred-point scale, right?”

“It is.”

“He must be horrible at writing tests!” she said, chuckling.

“So, what’s up with you?”

“Well, first, no 58s. All of my professors can make reasonable tests. I’m doing ... well, you know me.”

“Straight A’s and not struggling,” I said.

“Got it! Doing anything fun?”

“We saw Elton John last weekend. Oh, and we spoke at an anti-Straight Slate rally a few weeks ago.”

“Cool! Those guys need to lose and lose badly,” she said.

“Here’s hoping,” I said. “So, why the call right now?”