The Difference Between B's and V's

I was brought up at the head of the class--Not because I was particularly brainy or gifted, but merely due to my alphabetical circumstance. You see, I was once named Shana Berger... as in second letter in the alphabet Berger... as in, "Sit at the front of the class," "Go to the front of the line" Berger. Due to my short stature, I was also shuffled forward whenever height was the determining factor in student placement. Bottom line: I took a front row seat everywhere I went.


Life placed perpetually at the front of the classroom does something to a person. Sitting in plain view of the teacher, unable to get away with passing notes, dozing off, or daydreaming; unable to mutter anything under one's breath without being heard... It all adds up to a very tightly wound student. Being a B makes one type-A by means of simple classroom logistics.


Enter Wayne Van Cleave: My V-man. I took his name almost sixteen years ago as a matter of fact and didn't have any clue how different life would ever be at this end of the alphabet.

I learned the difference between B's and V's quite plainly in dental school. Our class was set up according to alphabetical order. We spent most of our first year of dental school toiling away in the sim-lab, arranged (of course) alphabetically. The sim-lab was a gigantic room wherein we would work on little rubber heads with plastic teeth to learn the fundamentals of restorative dentistry before they would let us loose on real teeth. The room was so large, I barely got to interact with the B's during the day. I was relegated to the side of the room housed by the students at the END of the alphabet: The V's.


What I learned from my carpool that year (Ballew and Bevens, who sat at the B end of the sim-lab, but remained outliers in the following statements about said B personalities), is that the B end was quite studious and very tightly wound. They took everything super seriously, would haggle over grades, talked endlessly about dentistry, sat silently doing their work, would freak out if something went awry... You get the picture. Many of them sat at the front of the class in lecture, too, and got quite a reputation for shouting out answers and asking endless questions. Bottom line, had I remained a Berger, I would have sat around a number of stress-cases and my perception of dental school may have been completely different.

As for my experiences with the V side of the room: All I can say is PARTAY!!! Our side of the sim-lab was MUCH more relaxed. We blasted "The Final Countdown" before every practical exam, we had weekly potlucks, decorated the walls with Christmas lights, drew faces on our rubber-headed patients, and basically lived in levity and fun (That's right folks. Despite the intense pressures inherent in dental school, I liked it! It was fun!). I thanked Wayne every day for showing me life with the V's.


But tonight I sadly learned I am still a B at heart.



Hayden recently chunked it on a Social Studies exam: 25 out of a possible 100. "Dang it!" I thought. "I'm raising a V! He's living in the end-of-the-alphabet-partay, and now his grades are starting to suck!"


Today, however, he received notification from his teacher that (aside from a smattering of A's and B's) the whole class had sucked it up on that exam. Therefore, he would omit those grades for everyone in the class. He acknowledged that it was kind of a bummer for the kids that had done so well--far above and beyond the rest of the class, but thought it better for all involved to drop the test scores.

For a brief moment, my heart stopped. I stopped chewing my dinner. I tensed up, barely able to breathe. My autonomic nervous system had reverted to my B mentality, which screamed, "NO FAIR! Those kids who got A's deserved them! They worked harder than the rest of those little slackers! Reward them for their efforts!"

The rest of the V slackers at my dinner table laughed at me, and I found myself feeling guilty for dredging up emotions directly related to my front-of-the-classroom-upbringing; emotions that stood in direct opposition to the success of my child on this particular exam. But there I was in all of my raw, type-A, competitive, stress-case B-ness. I guess you could say something along the lines of, "You can take the B out of the front of the classroom, but you can't take the front of the classroom out of the B."

I'll conclude my saga from one end of the alphabet to the other with a simple footnote: Our class valedictorian's name was Yetzer. How do you like them apples, B side?!