I wrote a short story in high school, in the simplistic style of a children’s parable, that told the absurd tale of a lumberjack who cut down all the trees on Earth.

My English teacher was so completely baffled by it that he got me to read it aloud to the class in the hopes that someone else would know what it meant.

No one did.

He said he’d give me an A, which, he said, translated to 80%. I did not take this well. The A should have translated to 100%.

The parable was about making the wrong choice for the sake of a short-term solution.