Tracy Flick Can't Win

by Tom Perrotta

You can’t keep reading these stories, one after the other, all these high-achieving young women exploited by teachers and mentors and bosses, and keep clinging to the idea that your own case was unique. In fact, it had become pretty clear to me that that was how it worked—you got tricked into feeling more exceptional than you actually were, like the normal rules no longer applied.

I felt a familiar pang of separation, the melancholy awareness that my daughter’s real life—at least her favorite parts—took place in my absence.

It was easy to forget, when you were a grown-up and high school was safely in the past, how it felt to be a captive audience, the way time could stand still in a classroom, and one bad teacher could poison your entire life.

The other problem with believing you’re special is the shock that comes when you finally realize you’re not, that you’re just as fucked up as everyone else, if not worse.

Lots of schools have a Hall of Fame. Usually the people who get honored are athletes, which only reinforces the existing (very unfair) social hierarchy and excludes a lot of exceptional people who are far more deserving of recognition.

That’s the thing about a can of worms. It doesn’t always come with a label on it.

I’ve never done any online dating—it seems like a terrible idea for a woman in the public eye—but I’ve heard numerous colleagues complain about how exhausting it can be, meeting stranger after stranger, serving yourself up like the daily special, and then somehow finding the energy and optimism to do it all over again with the next person in line.

So everyone in the local education community knew that I was looking to ascend to the next level, which meant they also knew that I’d failed to achieve my goal, because there I was, still the Assistant Principal, Jack Weede’s loyal sidekick. Once that happens a few times, you start to get that stink on you—the stink of the runner-up, the also-ran, the perennial bridesmaid. If you’re not careful, it can become your signature odor, your very own personal scent.

The past is always looking over your shoulder, whispering things you don’t want to hear. You just have to ignore it until it goes away.

I’d used my daughter as an excuse, because it was easier than telling Marissa the truth, which was that I’d gotten out of the habit of making friends, and preferred to be alone, or maybe I’d never gotten into the habit in the first place.

And who was I? I was nobody. A woman. A lowly bureaucrat. A doctor in quotation marks. It didn’t matter that I was better than he was—smarter and more competent and harder working and more dedicated to the kids. I couldn’t win. They wouldn’t let me.

I would get up on that stage, and I would be the smiling Master of Ceremonies, and I would perform that task the same way I’d performed a thousand other important tasks during my tenure at GMHS, with quiet competence and unstinting professionalism, and I wouldn’t let my personal feelings get in the way. I owed that to myself, not to anyone else.

My mother had been wrong: fame wasn’t a reward for your hard work. It was a lottery, pure dumb luck, and it didn’t matter anyway, not in the long run. That was the whole point of the poem. There’s no such thing as immortality; all our striving is in vain. In the end, we’ll all be forgotten, every single one of us, the winners and the losers alike.