Pretty good not good enough in the real world

BY Charles Osgood

There once was a pretty good student,

Who sat in a pretty good class

And was taught by a pretty good teacher,

Who always let pretty good pass.

He wasn’t terrific at reading,

He wasn’t a whiz bang at math,

But for him, education was leading

Straight down a pretty good path.

He didn’t find school to exciting,

But he wanted to do pretty well,

And he did have some trouble with writing,

And nobody had taught him to spell

When doing arithmetic problems,

Pretty good was regarded as fine. 

Five plus five didn’t always add up to 10,

A pretty good answer was nine.

The pretty good class that he sat in

Was part of a pretty good school.

And the student was not an exception,

On the contrary, he was the rule.

The pretty good school that he went to

Was there in a pretty good town.

And nobody there seemed to notice

He could not tell a verb from a noun.

The pretty good student in fact was

Part of a pretty good mob.

And the first time he knew what he lacked was

When he look for a pretty good job.

It was then, when he sought a position,

He discovered that life could be tough.

And he soon had a sneaky suspicion

Pretty good might not be good enough.

The pretty good town in our story

Was part of a pretty good state,

Which had pretty good aspirations,

And prayed for a pretty good fate.

There once was a pretty good nation,

Pretty proud of the greatness it had,

Which learned much too late,

If you want to be great,

Pretty good is, in fact, pretty bad.

From “The Osgood File”

copyright 1986, CBS Inc.