At grammar school we used to get Christmas and Easter test results as percentages, not A, B, C etc.
I regularly got really high percentages in subjects that I liked, such as Latin or German, but frequently did abysmally in certain other subjects.
When I was in the Sixth Form, we had the privilege (but not pleasure) of having the headmaster, Father G in Religious Knowledge. RK was not on my list of favourite subjects, and this Christmas I broke the school record for unsatisfactory results by several percentage points.
In those days, the teachers often read out the results in public, or posted them on the classroom wall. When he came to me, Father G read the number and declared: “McGarrighan, you are a typical product of the twentieth century.” It is theoretically possible that he understood and accepted that I as a modern individual took no particular interest in two-thousand-year-old myths and legends, but given the context, I was inclined to doubt that that was what he meant.
I was feeling a bit miffed, but my friend Kevin turned and whispered: “Not bad, he’s a product of the fourteenth century.”