STORIES OF [UNDER] ACHIEVEMENT [M, 11-30-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

STORIES OF [UNDER] ACHIEVEMENT  [M, 11-30-20]

Occasionally I think  that I have to stop writing this column because I’m out of stories. Then some friend like Howard Daughenbaugh asks, “If you’re so out of stories, why do I have to keep hearing them?”

Well, the stories in this column are supposed to lead to some semi-useful principle that folks can apply to their own lives to make them better, or at least think that they are doing so. On the other hand, the stories we old people tell our friends are basically tales of past underachievement, which really don’t lead to spiritual growth.

Our stories of underachievement are usually personal, but they also include our underachieving possessions, like the cars of our youth that Howard and some of my other friends have been telling about on an email thread that never seems to stop. [Interestingly, sphelczhek tried to make “thread” into “threat” before I caught it. Coincidence? I think not!] Considering those cars—mostly 1940s and ‘50s models, and not close to new even then—it’s amazing that any of us ever arrived at our destinations, or lived to tell the stories.

Other possessions, though, were underachievers, too. I was assured in high school that white buck shoes would attract girls. Those shoes were definitely underachievers. As were all the other things I owned.

To get stories of achievement, fit for a column called Christ In Winter, I have to tell the stories of others, and I’ve repeated all that I have heard. If you’re an underachiever, you don’t have personal stories that are very inspirational to others.

I thought about creating an organization called Under Achievement [UA], but I didn’t know how, because I was never around a place where I could learn through the programs of JA, Junior Achievement. I was aware of JA, though, because every once in a while, there would be a newspaper article about some JA kid well below the legal drinking age who had become a dillionaire by inventing a new supply chain protocol meme regimen for toilet paper and so had dropped out of school “because I’m smarter than all my teachers.” JA seemed quite proud of that.

JA’s web sites are in the UA category, though. It takes a long time on their web sites to find out what their purpose is, that the students who go through their programs have a “better understanding of finance and business concepts.” Mostly they just have buttons to click to volunteer or donate. Of course, that is the essence of “finance and business concepts”—volunteers and donations, getting you to give them money while you do the work for them, like convincing folks that “self-service” is all about making things more convenient for you rather than them getting out of paying employees to do their work.

Maybe I just need better friends, folks who have stories of achievement instead of the time during seminary that they passed a cattle truck in a convertible when all the cows were relieving themselves through the slats of the truck. Poor Howard.

John Robert McFarland