Celebrating Personal Holidays

 DECEMBER THIRD is a big day for me, a sort of personal holiday. and this is the fiftieth anniversary. It has nothing to do with the monthly arrival of my social security check on the third of each month. On December 3rd, 1970, I went to first hour Geometry class, as usual, as a sophomore in high school. We had fifteen kids in the class, twelve girls, and three boys. We usually divided into groups of three and competed on the blackboard to see which group could complete a geometric proof the fastest. We took it seriously. We three guys had our own group. ON this particular day, the other two dudes were absent from school, so there I was, a group of one, in competition against four groups of three ladies, all smart students.All fifteen students were smart; this was what they called in those days a n "STS" class, which stood for, believe it or not, "Superior Talented Students". Political correctness had not yet fully arrived in America. I believe that nowadays they call these classes "Gifted and Talented", or "GT", which really is not much less arrogant sounding. The gun went off, blowing yet another hole in the ceiling of the classroom, and the great daily proof challenge began.It was a long fifteen step affair. The step by step equations proliferated on the chalkboard, all over the room. If angle AB = angle BC, and angle BC = angle DE, then angle AB must = angle DE, that sort of thing. About halfway through I began to like my chances. I rushed to the finish line, raised my hand, and the teacher, a rotund man in his thirties, who by now must be long dead, verified that I had indeed finished first, working alone. Ever since, I have thought od December 3 as "Proof Day", proving that it meant a great deal to me, to beat all those high IQ girl groups by my lonesome. Of such memories is a happy life made.  Ah, I recall the time in sixth grade when I was the only kid in class who received an "A" in Math, which in those days was called an "E" for excellent. boy, was my dad ever happy! My other great academic memory was in my Ph.D European history program, when I received the highest grade in the World War One seminar, despite the presence in the seminar of eleven other academic hot shots. I had gotten of f to a horrible start in that class, by delivering an incoherent report on a  n abstruse book about the Austro-Hungarian Empire pre World War One, which made me mad, because I allowed all the other students to line,up at the table laden with books and make their choice first, and the boring tome was ll that was left by the time I got my pick. The professor had upbraided me in front of the entire class, which had angered but motivated me. So, I buckled down, and spent the rest of the semester catching up, and it so happened that the final, a take home essay assignment, was right up my historical alley. I nailed it, and the professor stopped me in the hall one day, and told me I had come in first on semester grades. I felt vindicated. That might be the most noteworthy example of my life of the benefits of being motivated by scorn, and of never giving up. But, still and all, I cherish "Proof Day" above all else, even perhaps Christmas.