NATURE ABHORS A PERFECT THING (OR PERSON)

When Amy of the TV series Judging Amy was deciding an "Ecstasy case'' in her Hartford Connecticut Juvenile Court, she sentenced two Ecstasy-carrying boys to reform school. Her rational: "Ecstasy has no other use than the rape of women."

Well, Amy should have known better. Nature abhors a perfect thing. She abhors perfection even more intensely than she abhors a vacuum. There is nothing under the sun that is perfectly good or perfectly bad -- including Ecstasy.

News reports indicate that scientists have used Ecstasy, Prozac and other psychotropic drugs in a lab experiment involving cultures carrying lymphatic cancer. According to the researchers, Ecstasy was effective against 50 percent of the cancer cultures. At this stage, Ecstasy looks as if might become a good thing in the war on cancer.

Cigarettes cause a jillion health problems, including lung cancer, heart disease, esophageal cancer, low-birth weight babies -- it's a very long list. Yet cigarettes fail to meet the test of being perfectly evil. Research has just shown that women who smoke during pregnancy are 50 percent less likely to develop cancer. Something about nicotine suppressing estrogen is the explanation.

Iodine is a lethal poison, which makes it a bad thing. Yet a certain amount of iodine in the body is essential, which makes it a good thing.

The sun causes your skin to create vitamin D, vital to health growth and life. But the same sun causes premature skin aging and melanoma.

The most common form of perfection in human beings is consistency and predictability. But even the best-behaved child will erupt now and then at surprising times. The most loyal of husbands is highly likely to have at least one affair in his lifetime. We are all brought up to tell the truth, but research indicates that the average adult admits to telling at least one lie a day. Students, who are far more honest, admit to about two lies a day. Even George Washington of Cherry Tree fame was an artful liar, effectively misleading the British throughout the Revolutionary War. When Diogenes came down to earth searching for a perfectly honest man, his quest went on and on, ultimately failing. (He might have had better luck with women, but they didn't count in those days.)

Why does a top consulting firm succeed brilliantly for one client and then fail abysmally for a second? Robert A. Lull, founder of Brooks International, once said, "Consistency is very difficult to achieve. It is really hard to be consistently good or consistently lousy."

Babe Ruth was famous as the home run king of baseball. But what is less often noted is that he was also the strikeout king of baseball. Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller would strike out 18 batters with his blazing fastball, but he could be blown out of the box by hitters like Joe DiMaggio. Record-setting Dan Marino is often considered the best quarterback in the history of professional football, but he never won a Super Bowl.

Sometimes beauty is looked at as perfection. But even the most beautiful Hollywood star carries her share of visual impediments. Julia Roberts is lanky and awkward with big feet. But cameramen have become experts in glorifying her best features (blazing smile) while avoiding her imperfections. To see this clearly, watch Ms. Roberts in Mystic Pizza, which was shot by an indifferent cameraman. Then see Pretty Woman, shot by an adoring cameraman. The differences will astound you.

During the 1940s, Hollywood attempted to construct the perfect woman. Through the use of a consumer survey, respondents were asked to choose the star with the perfect facial features, voting for the best eyes, the best hair, the best nose, the best eyebrows, the best lips, the best chin, etc. Then the photographs of the winning features were put into a composite and published. What resulted was a perfectly homely face. When it comes to perfect beauty, the whole is equal to far less than the sum of its parts.

Most folks with common sense realize that there is nothing which is perfectly good or perfectly bad. Many colloquial expressions demonstrate this.

• "Every cloud has a silver lining."
• "Into each life some rain must fall"
• "He leads a dog's life."
• "Every dog has its day"

Nature realizes that perfection can only cause sensory deprivation. For how can the woman who never experiences fear perceive tranquility? How can the man who has never been sad comprehend the phenomenon of happiness?

And who could possible comprehend beauty without the considerable help of all those plain Janes out there?