BATTING A THOUSAND

I was looking for a picture for you that would somehow introduce the topic you expect from the title of this post.  So, I went to Google because I didn't have too much time since it is already the middle of the night.  So I put in the three words that you see at the top there. What I saw in ten pages of Larry and Sergei's masterpiece was about four pictures of marginally related baseball pictures and a very large array of naughty things...So, I figured that I would complete the idiocy by taking the picture that you see.  Two French flags celebrating a XXX billboard with Americana...Sheeesh!
It's a good thing that the nun who taught us decimals is no longer with us.  I hope she doesn't get her wings wrinkled by the sass of this little essay.  I bring it up for one reason, and one reason only.  The other day my younger son used the expression "Batting a thousand" to describe the string of bad luck that someone whom we both know was suffering.  It is a part of US culture that I don't hear much any more.  But when I heard it I thought of Sister Robert Marie.  5th grade at the Immaculate Conception school on Summer street in the "Flats" of Holyoke, Massachusetts, down by the canal.  The "Paper City" it was called.  When the times they got a little more brazen, the bumper stickers that they were flashing around read, "The best city by a dam site."  If anyone thought of that in the 40's, they didn't use it for fear that the mayor would have washed their mouth out with soap.  Make mine Ivory, please.  It's 99/100% pure, you know.
Anyway, the good sister decided that it was time to teach us how to calculate our batting averages.  She made the mistake of thinking that she had enough "street" smarts to deal with us wise-acres.  You can all see this coming.  She asks, "If Johnny hits the ball and gets to first base, what is his batting average?"  We all say, "A thousand."  That was it.  She spent at least a half hour trying to  get us to say, 1.000 [one.point zero, zero, zero.]  Forget that noise. She was having a mental breakdown.  She tried to make us say that some batters bat [no, she didn't say "hit"-- hey she was a sister, remember?"] "Three hundred and twenty-five thousandths."  Whoooie!  That went over really well.  We could all see ourselves talking to the tough, "eat-nails-for-breakfast-catcher" that he was batting only "two hundred and ten thousandths."  Imagining the consequences of doing something like that was altogether too much for any of us to bear.  
Actually I remember that a couple of us guys, and even one girl tried to reason with Sister Robert Marie, but this was 1949 or so...You know, "pay, pray and obey!"  Oh, and  keep quiet too.  
Sister took it for a while, but then she changed the subject to geography or some such safe haven of the sort.  We were good with that, along as we had her out of our hair and we could go on using the phrase "Batting a thousand" to our hearts content.


So see, I thought about all of that and still had to suffer through the bad experience with Mr. Google and the French stuff.  But, all in all, it was fun.  We have so little culture here in the good ol' US of A, that when we trip over a bit of it, we have to put it out there, right?  Right.  Now, go to bed, "Mrs. Calabash, where ever you are!"