OK! Perfect!

Joining “Have a great day” in the pantheon of overworked phrases is “OK! Perfect!” The two words together are the kind of joyous cry you’d expect from a NASA crew after the successful launch of a spacecraft. Or the last take of a major film production. Or even the moment when, at last, the bride-to-be finds The Wedding Dress.

But no, OK! Perfect! is most often used in tedious dialogues with strangers in the day-to-day. Example: A call to a phone company’s customer service representative. You are after a new cellphone password. The CSR needs you to verify your mother’s maiden name. You can and you do, and then the CSR says: “OK! Perfect!”

Or, as happened last week, your patient care advocate, taking a request for a prescription refill, has to make sure you’re you. “Please verify your date of birth.” That’s a can-do thing. The PCA rewards you for remembering your own birth date: “OK! Perfect!”

Restoring joy to OK! Perfect! The solar-powered Christmas lights you strung on the lilacs actually work! Unfortunately, that is highly unlikely, but if solar-powered outdoor lights did come on, two OK! Perfect! cries, please. You just finished decorating the Christmas tree in the living room, and its bare place doesn’t show. You remembered your donation to the food pantry AND Community Concepts fuel assistance program. Say OK! Perfect!

You picked the winners in the tree-decorating contest in the Rumford Falls Municipal Auditorium Saturday night. The Lithuanian Heritage group, Western Foothills Kids, Bangor and Franklin banks, the Credit Union, and Ink Plaza were among the contestants. Jim Rinaldo and Co. added hot chocolate, a community carol sing, performers like Lori Grassette, and paper and pen for letters to Santa to the second annual Festival of Trees. A grand family night.

The Rumford Area Association for the Performing Arts annual Christmas concert went up Dec. 3 and 4. Now there was a production worthy of the audience’s OK! Perfect! when the curtain opened. And it’s easy to imagine director Judith Kuhn, choreographer Connie Porter and accompanist Gail Dorr echoing the sentiment when the last note sounded.

Many readers will remember that “Nobody’s perfect” is not only an excuse for bad behavior, it’s also a truth: There’s nearly perfect, more nearly perfect and most nearly perfect, but no perfect, no perfection. So let us wish one another the most nearly perfect Yuletide yet. That’s as good as it gets.

Linda Farr Macgregor is a freelance writer; contact her at jmacgregor1@roadrunner.com.

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