Dear Readers,
There I was in my favorite diner telling the waitress I wanted a tuna salad sandwich on gluten-free toast.
“Perfect!” she replied before heading off to place my order.
Perfect?! Would a request for egg salad on wheat have been met with, “Fairly good,” and salami on rye with, “Eh, so-so!”?
“Perfect!”? Nothing in this world can truly be “entirely without fault or defect.”
And yet, when I called the doctor’s office to make an appointment the other day, I was asked for my birthdate.
“September 1955,” I said to which the scheduler replied, “Perrr-fect!”
Ummm . . . Was I supposed to say “thank you” because she had complimented my birth date?
How about the time you were en route to your Aunt Judy’s house in Coal City, Ill. when you asked your iPhone for “gas stations near me” and the robotic voice replied, “There is a Shell station in 1.7 miles. Should I call them or do you want directions?”
“Get directions,” you instructed; “Perfect!” proclaimed the navigation app.
Yikes! Even computers are saying it!
When handing a grocery store cashier your charge card, do you ever hear, “Perfect!” in reply?
When telling the guy at the Mermaid Car Wash you want “The full-service two-step foamy wash with undercarriage cleansing, rust inhibitor, turbo dry, and simonized hot carnauba wax AND DON’T FORGET THE SENIOR DISCOUNT LIKE YOU DID LAST TIME,” does the guy say, “Perfect!”?
Is it just me, dear Readers, or would you agree we are misusing and overusing the word “perfect” in our everyday vernacular?
What is particularly perplexing is that in the Bible, Matthew 5:18 tells us to “Be perfect like your heavenly Father is perfect.” Is it actually possible for a sandwich, a birth date, a gas station, a payment option, a car wash, or a person to be as perfect as God?!
After many diligent days consulting dictionaries, lexicons, and Scripture scholars, and after many sleepless nights pondering the problem, I believe I have finally made my peace with “perfect.”
Mr. Webster lists “perfect” primarily as an adjective but at the very end of the long, long entry, he admits that “perfect” can also be used as a verb. Ah ha!! As a verb, it means “to refine, to bring to a final form; to perfect something is to improve it so that it becomes as good as it can be.” So, not without fault or defect, but as good as it can be!
How comforting it is to realize that God does not expect us to always be completely without fault or flaw; He only asks us to be a constant work in progress. As long as we are continually trying to grow and to be the best possible version of ourselves, we are following that Scriptural mandate to “be perfect.” We can strive to achieve perfection because with God, anything is possible!
With all that in mind, the next time I venture into Hubbard’s diner, I will take pleasure in ordering that tuna salad sandwich, secure in the knowledge it will be as tasty as it can possibly be — for now — because the cook is continuing to experiment with the best combination of ingredients available in his pursuit of culinary perfection.
And, after adding a tomato slice and dill pickle, I’ll have no problem sighing a happy sigh, taking a bite, and announcing, “Mmmm . . . perfect!”
Linda Kelly is a member of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Madison.