"Saved By Zero" by the Fixx

1983 / #20

Rate Your Music score: 3.58 out of 5!

The Fixx is exactly the sort of act that inspired this very blog. My go-to radio station in much of the mid-1980s seemed to be fast on new wave. While I try to make sure this blog has a good balance of music, it might at times lean slightly toward new wave. Maybe it only seems that way, because there's nothing resembling new wave on the charts today. We need a new wave revival.

And with a title like "Saved By Zero", we should have known this single would eventually be profiled here. It evokes an incident in life that was extensively rehashed many years after it took place.

I didn't even know what the title of this song meant or what the song was about until recently when I read that it's about the freedom of having nothing left in life to lose. Yet, every time I think of this song, I think of something that occurred in 5th grade. For months that year, we had to read books that had won the Newbery Medal. And they were hard books too. The other 5th grade class got to read books that had won the Caldecott Medal, so they got books like 1 Is One. But we had to read books like Smoky The Cowhorse that had about 1,000 pages. And we only got a few weeks to read each one.

There wasn't any logic to this, as we were assigned to these classes randomly.

Literature was not my strong suit. So when it became time for a very difficult test on one of these books, success was not an option. It was not an open book test, but I had the book open in my lap. I still got frustrated with the test, so I decided to see if I could get steam to shoot out my ears - like Fred Flintstone. I would clench my jaws tightly and hold my breath.

As I loudly paged through the book on my lap, the teacher finally noticed that I had the book open for a closed book test. By this point, I had long since given up completely, so I figured I might as well entertain the class as much as possible. The teacher took me out in the hall to lecture me. She declared I would receive a 0% for the test, because I had the book open when I wasn't supposed to.

I replied at the top of my lungs, "WHAT?!?!?! ZERO?!?!?!"

The kids in each of the classrooms must have been having the time of their lives listening to this exchange. Good for them! I was happy to provide the entertainment.

I forgot about this hilarious episode for over 10 years. Then, when I was in college, one of my schoolmates who was in one of the 4th grade classes down the hall from me when I was in 5th grade started talking about it. I was considered a hero by his 4th grade class because of the incident.

For months after it was first rehashed, this story kept getting repeated over and over. One of our most popular sayings became, "WHAT?!?!?! ZERO?!?!?!"

Maybe someday, saved by zero.