Joe Bennett: All's fair in love and war - and school prize-giving

Joe Bennett thinks he should have got a school prize for passing calculus - something he struggled with - rather than the one for languages, which he found easy. Photo / 123rf

OPINION:

Noel's mother died. Among her things, Noel found an Order of Proceedings for a school prize-giving in the early 1970s. His name was on it. So was mine.

Noel was in the year below me at school. We played in the same football and cricket teams. He was a strong and handsome kid who in the sixth form grew sideburns that would not have disgraced a Victorian clergyman. These days he lives in Ontario where he seems to spend his time swimming in lakes with his dog. I think he may have married money.

Our prize-giving was like all school prize-givings. It took place in a local theatre. The whole school attended along with any parents who wanted to be there, which meant the parents of kids who won prizes.

As a prize-winner you lined up on one side of the stage, hair combed, tie tied, and when your name was read out you walked across the stage to where the local dignitary, previously unheard of and never heard of again, stood with an outstretched hand. A quick shake, make eye contact, say thank you, take book, then disappear down the steps.

I found the walking difficult. The problem of course was thinking about it. Self-consciousness produced a sort of eager waddle. The simple actions of this world - walking, breathing, swallowing - are all best done by the unconscious self. The conscious self, the self that is aware of self, is hopeless at them. (And yet it is this conscious self that we are so proud of. We tout it as what distinguishes us from the beasts of the field who, we say, know nothing about themselves, who are merely a set of instincts, of simple autonomic responses to stimuli. Ah, our fond delusions.)

The Order of Proceedings doesn't say what I won a prize for but it will have been languages. I liked languages, enjoyed studying them, grasped the grammar, and absorbed them readily. In other words I had an aptitude for them, something innate for which I could take no credit. And yet they gave me prizes for it. It was like being rewarded for having red hair.

What I should have got a prize for was passing a calculus exam. I had no aptitude for calculus. I didn't know what it was for and had no sense of how it related to the actual world. When the maths teacher discussed calculus with other kids they spoke a language I knew I'd never grasp. I passed the exam only by learning the stuff by rote. I deserved the prize that was given to the kid who found it easy. But that is, was and always will be the way of the world.

To be fair the school did try to reward triers. There were "special" headmaster's prizes for effort rather than success. But they were prizes no one prized. Who wants to be rewarded for an effortful failure? Success without effort is the ideal.

We all admired natural athletes, kids like Grimshaw who had the body of a Greek statue and who threw the javelin out of sight. I fancied myself as a javelinist and could hurl it a respectable distance, but when Grimshaw hurled it you could hear the thing hum. He beat me by an absurd distance. I tried but no one noticed. Grimshaw didn't have to and everyone swooned.

What Noel won a prize for I don't know. Perhaps it was for being strong and handsome. And given the apparent ease of his life today perhaps the world has gone on rewarding these qualities. Nobody ever said that life was fair.

The name next to mine on the Order of Proceedings was Dave Andrew. "Wasn't he," wrote Noel, "the kid who played the piano?" He was indeed. His fingers flew about the keyboard in a way I found astonishing. No doubt he'd worked at it but there was also an instinctive gift that I could only gawp at.

The name next to Noel's was Nick Kendall, who lived just down the road from me. "Didn't he go on to become a doctor?" I asked.

"Yes he did," wrote Noel. "But did you know that he could put both legs behind his head at the same time?"

The gifts God gives.