Perfect is the Enemy of Good

Perfect is the Enemy of Good

I don’t know why I agreed to do this, go to a 15^th year reunion party of my graduating high school class. I’m not a big party goer at the best of times. The last one I went to was five years ago, and that was a party thrown by my parents, complete with someone they had set up to meet me. My mother is worried that she will never have grandchildren. I am an only child, hence the pressure put on me to get into a ‘serious relationship.’ I live with my parents, so I hear that expression a lot.

I am on Facebook and regularly visit the website of my high school. The main reason I do this is in hopes of seeing HER, the magnificent Melissa. She was perfect, absolutely perfect. She was tall, a little more so than me, and slender but very shapely. Her eyes were summer sky blue, her hair was long, dark like a moonless night and often professionally styled. No one could do that by herself at home. We never actually went out as a couple, but we danced together at school dances and parties thrown by our classmates, and we sometimes ate lunch together in the school cafeteria. She once said to me, after two dances, “Promise me you won’t ever fall in love with me.” I lied, and said that I wouldn’t. It was too late. I already had. I couldn’t even think of going out or being with any other girl. After we graduated from high school, I never saw her again. But she was still the memory model of perfection that no woman I saw ‘in the flesh’ could compete with.

And now we are having a reunion party. I dread going for a number of good reasons.

One is the success stories I will hear. I have a decent job, but I am not an executive or owner of a prosperous business like I know that some will be. Then there is living with my parents. Even when I tell people that my dad has serious arthritis, so cannot do any of the physical work around the house, it will still be like I have LOSER stamped on my head for all to see. Then there will be talk about wives and husbands, and about children and their various small triumphs. The words ‘still not married’ will be said when and if there is talk of me there beyond or barely within my hearing.

           The party will be held in the school auditorium, and I know there will be loud music and dancing ‘from our era’. It will be like high school dances of old, but I most likely won’t have Melissa as a partner, and will be standing at the side, drinking, and making negative comments about the dancers with the other mate-less ‘bachelors’ in the crowd. Do I really want to do that?

The Night of the Party

It’s Friday. The party is tonight. I am getting upset fussing over the smallest things. Deciding what to wear for one – old jeans and a t-shirt with the name and pictures of my favourite rock band on it? I think not. I’m not going formal either, it doesn’t suit me. But what is casual when you’re going to a high school reunion? Is it midway between slob and snob? I decide to wear the pants I wore to work, but change my shirt and underwear. The first time I danced with Melissa, my mother had made me change my briefs before I went to the dance. It became a ritual.

I have business cards. Should I bring them? Would anyone there want to call, text, or e-mail me? I doubt it, but I’ll still bring some cards anyway.

           I get into the car and sit for about five minutes before I even turn it on. The words “No one is forcing you to go Tom,” keep running through my head. But there is still the big “What if” that overrules my other thoughts, even when they are followed by ‘How do you think that Melissa will react? And worse, “What if she doesn’t even remember me?”

           I drive to the high school. This is the first time that I do so in a car that is mine, not part of a car-for-Friday night/clean up the garage on Saturday’ deal with my parents. That is something at least. I park the car, turn it off, and sit inside for a few minutes. I can still drive away. But no, someone might see, and mention to someone else, to Melissa.

           I walk in and sign in. I look around for familiar faces, particularly one. Then I see her. She still looks so model tall and thin and impossible, so beautiful, so perfect. I walk up to her. She looks at me strangely, and after a few moments thought says, “You look familiar, but I can’t remember your name. You must have been in one of my classes.” 

           Much to my own surprise, I laugh, and tell her who I am, and how we danced and ate together sometimes. She smiles, and says, “Now I remember. Of course.” Then she turns and walks away, conversation duty completed. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.  

           But something soon does. I feel a tap on my shoulder. When I turn around I see a face that takes me a few seconds to remember. It’s Ellen. We were in the same class every year in high school. The last year we sat side by side, and she would explain to me what the teacher was saying when I was confused and looked the part.

           “Hi, Ellen. Good to see you.”

           “You know what else is good, Tom? Billy and the Blue Beats are going to be playing in a few minutes. Will you dance with me?”

           To my own surprise, I did not hesitate to say ‘yes’. 

           We went into the auditorium and sat together. We talked like old friends, sharing memories, and laughing at old times, and how our parents still treat us like kids. It struck me that I had never thought of her as anything more than someone who could help me with school. I never thought of her as a potential dance partner or date. But as she continued to talk to me, I learned that she had definitely thought of me that way. She told me that in our last year of high school, on the week of the Sadie Hawkins Dance, when girls could ask boys out, she had picked up her phone three or four times, only to put it down again. She thought that I was “too perfect” to want to go out with her.

           To the surprise of both of us, I said “There is an old Italian saying that ‘perfect is the enemy of good. I heard it from an old Italian”. Ellen laughed

           We danced and had a good time. I gave her one of my cards, and she gave me one of hers. Our lives would soon be good together. Not perfect, but nothing and no one is.