Deferred Success

“Failure” is such a nasty, negative word. Surely there is some way to modify the concept.

Long about now, many school-aged students are traipsing home with the first report card of the new school year. You might recall the stress of bringing that sealed piece of paper home that may have sealed your fate and your freedom for the foreseeable future. Even if you were a teenage brainiac, the thought of bringing home anything less than a “C” was enough to make you sweat all the way through your Members Only jacket (or whatever it was you were wearing in high school).

Getting an “F,” though, was the ultimate worst- case scenario — so bad that the school system skipped an entire letter of the alphabet going from “D” straight to the red flag of failure. Have you noticed that? Why not just give an “E” as the lowest grade?

Oh, no. It’s an “F”.

Not an “E”.

An “F”. Flunky. Failure. Fiasco. Fault. Fake. Farce. Fatigue. Fatality. Faux pas. Feeble. Feckless. Flawed. Flop. Frail....