by Louis Woodley
Allison Young waited until her classmates had left before she turned over the graded exam that Professor Furman had left face down on her desk. She knew it hadn't been her finest effort, and he didn't look too happy with her.
This was the second exam in her Organic Chemistry class. She was one of the few freshmen in a sophomore class, but she'd convinced her advisor that she was up to the challenge. She'd always been driven to succeed by her parents, although their methods could be considered unorthodox.
The class was challenging but she'd managed to pull an A- on the first exam. Sadly, that led to a case of hubris for the second exam; she'd socialized when she should have been studying and it showed during the exam. She'd made a bunch of minor mistakes and had no one else to blame.
She'd never made anything lower than a B on a high school quiz, but she steeled herself to accept that 20% of her grade in this class could be as bad as a C. She'd need to study harder to salvage her A.
She reminded herself that it would be okay; she'd just have to come back stronger. Then she flipped over her exam and then things weren't okay; in fact she felt nauseated.
A 68! If there was any confusion, the big F and "Disappointing" confirmed the unthinkable; for the first time in her life she'd failed an exam. How could that have happened? She desperately flipped through the exam, adding up the -1 and -2 marks, hoping it had somehow been added up incorrectly. Unfortunately, the grade was accurate.
The next class was starting to file in and she had to leave before she burst into tears. She didn't get along with her roommate and she sure wasn't about to call her parents to share this news. They'd fly here and wear her tail out for being so irresponsible. She had to find Josh, since in a way he was partially responsible.
Allison and Josh Klein met at one of those campus ice-breakers designed to keep freshmen from becoming hermits locked in their rooms. Then they discovered they shared a class together and became "study buddies" to work on assignments together. They quickly began spending a lot of their free time together. Neither of them had much high school dating experience so they'd been slowly working their way into actually becoming a couple.
They'd progressed to the point where she'd (chastely) spent a night snuggled next to Josh in his bed. But the downside of their relationship was that she slowly began paying less attention to her studies in favor of being with Josh. She just wrote it off as part of the natural freedom that any college freshman experiences when they're on their own for the first time. The key was not to become an idiot and so far her grades hadn't been impacted, so she let things slide further than she intended.
On the night before the exam in question, she'd fully intended to study. But then Josh called, insisting there was a movie playing at the student center that she absolutely had to see. She convinced herself that she could go see the flick and then batten herself down to seriously study. Unfortunately, the movie had been followed by coffee with friends until after 11:00.
She finally got back to her room but she wasn't used to starting to study so late and couldn't concentrate. Her class notes looked like hieroglyphics. She finally went to bed around 2:30 and woke up woolly-headed. She stumbled through her first two classes and by the time she finally sat down to take the exam she was thoroughly in the weeds. Hence she'd only managed the 68 and detonated her GPR.
Josh waited outside his dorm for Allison to arrive. He could tell from her call that she was close to tears but he wasn't prepared for how shattered she looked. He asked if a family member had died. She assured him that it wasn't that traumatic, but wanted to know if they could discuss it in private.
They took the stairs up to Josh's room without speaking. The hamsters in Allison's brain were racing in their wheels; Josh was her closest friend but could she really ask him to do what she was contemplating? Josh was oblivious to the request he was about to receive.
When they finally sat down together on his bed, he asked what the matter was. She soundlessly reached into her backpack and pulled out the deplorable exam. She handed it to him with her head bowed.
"Shit," he couldn't help exclaiming. Allison was a good student; how had she gotten such a lousy grade? He tried to make eye contact but she wouldn't look up at him. He was pretty sure he could see tears forming. "Allison, what the hell happened?"
It took her a moment to respond. "Um - remember when you told me I needed to come see The Seven Samurai with you last week and then we went to get coffee afterwards?" Josh nodded his head; it was a classic he wanted her to see when it played in their campus theater. "Well... I was supposed to be studying for my exam that night, but..." she trailed off.
Josh felt a combination of guilt and irritation. "You went to the movie with me instead of studying?" Allison nodded. "Why? Why didn't you just say 'Sorry Josh I've got an exam I need to study for'? I would have understood. I was glad you came to see it, but I didn't mean to keep you from studying. And we didn't need to hang out so late afterwards. Now I feel bad that I talked you into going, but I'm not going to hate you if you've got something more important to do, okay? But I'm really sorry this happened; is there anything I can do to help?"
There was, but Allison had an attack of nerves. From an outsider's perspective, what she was considering seemed insane. Just asking could permanently damage their relationship. But her parents had conditioned her to expect a certain response to a low grade. Short of flying home to present them with the failing grade, she had no alternative than to ask her boyfriend to help her assuage her guilt.
But what if he was willing to assist but it still didn't help? After all, she was used to the way her parents motivated her to improve; would she get the same reaction from Josh? She was driving herself insane trying to figure out what to do. To ask, or not to ask, that was the question; but what was the answer?
She didn't realize that she'd started sniffling until Josh wrapped his arms around her. "It will be okay. I know the grade sucks, but I promise we'll get it back up. And I'll do whatever you need to make it happen; even if you need me to become a Drill Sergeant to make sure you do your best from now on, okay?"
Well, it was close, but what she really needed was more of a Lord High Executioner. It wasn't until she saw his puzzled face that she realized that she'd blurted those words out loud. How could she possibly explain this?
Needless to say, the same question was on Josh's mind. "Are you saying I'm supposed to be the Red Queen saying 'Off with your head' because you flunked an exam? The death penalty seems a little extreme, don't you think?" He tried to make light of the situation but her unhappy face told him that it wasn't a laughing matter.
"Okay, I'm sorry if I sounded flip, but you've got to admit that's something kind of unusual to tell someone," said Josh.
When Allison said nothing and continued to look miserable, he pleaded with her to please explain what she meant. He reminded her that he already knew she was weird so he wouldn't be surprised by anything she could tell him.
"That's what you think," she thought to herself. But his smart-ass comment got her to smack his arm in pretend offense. "Just wait until he hears what I'm about to ask him..."
She flopped onto his bed and turned so that she was facing away from him. If she had to look him in the face she still might chicken out. She took a deep breath and then proceeded to shock the hell out of her boyfriend.
"Look, please just promise me you'll never tell anyone about this," she began. "Even if you think I'm the biggest freak in the entire world, promise that you won't embarrass me, okay?"
Josh thought his Alice in Wonderland reference was becoming apropos; things were definitely getting curiouser and curiouser. But he assured her that she was already the biggest freak in the world so there wouldn't be much she could do to change his mind.
Now fully committed to telling him the truth, she began to explain the comment. "Look, you have no idea how embarrassing this story is. I mean, I can't even look at you right now. So please just let me tell you everything and, if it was a mistake, let me crawl out of here with a shred of dignity, okay?"
At this point, Josh would have promised anything to hear the explanation.
"You need to understand that my parents have high expectations for me. Not 'We're going to disown you if you don't get into Harvard' crazy, obviously, since we're not at Harvard. But when I was in 9th grade and my grades started to become part of my transcript, they decided a reasonable standard that I was expected to meet no matter what..."
"Can I ask what?" said Josh.
"They decided that I could make no lower than a 90. In our grading system, 95 was the lowest A so a 90 was a middle-B. So that was as low as my grade was expected to go. And our school had a website where they reported all your scores and my parents followed it like you wouldn't believe. So if I got below a 90 there were consequences..."
There was a pregnant pause before Josh asked if she was grounded or something if she made less than a 90. This was what Allison had been dreading, especially since she'd soon be asking him to assume the role of a surrogate parent. "Not exactly," she said hesitantly.
Josh wanted to know "Well then, what exactly?"
Well here went nothing; she blurted the big reveal out in a long rambling sentence. "My dad would paddle my naked butt; I got 1 swat for every point I got below a 90 because they said it would teach me to be prepared and ask for help ahead of time instead of waiting until it was too late. So if I got a bad grade then I deserved getting my butt beat to make me do better next time." Now that her secret was out, Allison prayed Josh wouldn't kick her out for being such a freak.
Josh was having trouble processing this new knowledge. If he'd heard correctly, anytime Allison got below a 90 on anything, she'd get her bare butt swatted with a paddle? That seemed bizarre, but it would explain why she was having so much trouble spitting the story out. That had to be frustrating to do your best and then have your parents punish you because it wasn't acceptable enough for them.
Other than a few pops from Granny when he was little, Josh had never been spanked. So he could hardly imagine how hard it must have been for Allison to drop her pants and get swatted on her bare butt.
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