pop quiz
In about grade one or two, I can remember what was likely the first time a teacher had given us a pop quiz. The quiz consisted of 50 true-or-false questions, and every other student scored between about 30 and 45, as one might expect, according to probability. I was the only student to score zero.
I do not have a story to go with this; at least nothing interesting, other than the fact we used crayons to colour the answers green or red instead of just writing true or false. Which I guess is a bit of a spoiler as to what actually happened there. A simple mistake, really, but I didn't handle it well, and the humiliation was real; it may have been one of the first bricks in the wall.
Anyway, I've been thinking again; or maybe more accurately, a voice in my head is trying to explain that happiness is the sum of one's collective shared experience.
Is it really that simple?