Is flop sweat a thing when you’ve already flopped?
I was an A-student – for better or worse.
Better for academics. Worse for any social life I’d aspired to have growing up.
While my fellow students looked with dread on getting parents to sign their graded tests, I enjoyed the process, felt tremendous pride in showing my work to them and giving them bragging rights with their friends.
Until I got a C on a chem final. That feeling of uncertainty – of questioning my own worth in the eyes of my parents, of not wanting to show weakness – was so emotionally fraught to me in that moment that I forged my Mom’s signature on the test.
Of course, I got caught. My teachers all knew her signature, and my brilliant attempt at imitating it wasn’t even close to being accurate.
That feeling of getting caught in a lie, of lying just because I hadn’t met expectations … it was exactly how I was in that moment this week, sitting outside Bernie’s office.
I was sweating uncontrollably, dabbing my face with a handkerchief. I couldn’t help but wonder … is flop sweat a thing when you’ve already flopped?
“John?”
Bernie emerged from the newsroom, dime-store readers atop his head per usual, carrying papers and wearing his ever-present sweater vest. Today’s was cranberry in color.
“Yes.”
“In here.”
He motioned me toward a chair across from his inside, then closed the door.
“You know why you’re here, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I think I have a feeling.”
He sat down, placed the papers in front of him and pulled the readers from his head.
I remember him bending down and rifling through papers in a desk drawer for what seemed like forever, but above all I remember thanking the gods above that I’d worn a suit jacket as my shirt underneath was fully saturated at this point.
He emerged with a an oversized file, distorted and full of dog-eared papers, and opened it.
“This … this is what you need.”
He handed me a road map, which, quite frankly, had seen better days. Torn at the folds … the routes were difficult to follow. Pencil scribbles with dates and times filled in throughout between the streets.
He pointed to one notation in particular, pointing at what I knew to be the big highway.
“The local,” he said, nodding toward me. “Got it?”
I nodded.
He glanced at the map briefly, then pointed again, this time to River Road.
“The highway,” he said, sitting down and crossing his arms in front of him. “Got it?”
“Yes … but I don’t understand, what’s wrong with GPS? I mean … this is …”
Bernie stood up, his hands on his hips, glaring at me. “This is how we talk about things here. It’s called style. Learn it. No GPS is gonna tell you that.”
I put my hands up in deference. “Okay, okay, I get it.”
As I walked out the door, I was suddenly that 8th grade student again, getting reprimanded for not meeting the mark.
I guess the good news is that I didn’t have to get him to sign the clip.