(Contributed by Laura Kalchik, edited by George Denise, Scoutmaster)

Last week I spoke about the kinds of things you have to do to achieve 98%, 99% and 100% in most any endeavor. We looked at some words and applied some formulas and even figured out how to achieve more than 100%! (Let's not go there right now.)

Generally, most of us would agree, 99% is a pretty darn good effort. In school, on virtually any test or paper, 99% is not just an A, but a very strong A. But, let's consider 99% in the real world.

If 99% were good enough, then

1.7 million pieces of mail would be lost each day by the US Post Office;
70,000 planes would crash each year (190 per day);
2 plane landings in a single day at O'Hare International Airport on Chicago would be considered unsafe
11,000 pieces of luggage would be lost each day of the year by airlines;
35,000 newborn babies would be dropped by doctors or nurses each year;
12 babies will be given to the wrong parents each day.
200,000 incorrect drug prescriptions would be given out each year by pharmacists;
107 incorrect medical procedures will be performed by the end of the day today.
291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly this year.
We would be without electricity and telephones for 15 minutes each day; and
1,314 phone calls will be misplaced by telecommunication services each minute.
There would be 9 misspelled words on every page of eery magazine.
315 entries in Webster's Dictionary will be misspelled.
2.5 million books will be shipped with the wrong covers.
Our newspapers would not be delivered 4 times each year.
We'd have unsafe drinking water almost 4 days out of each year.
2,488,200 cases of soft drink produced in the next 12 months will be flatter than a bad tire.
2 million people would die from food poisoning each year.
22,000 checks will be deducted from the wrong bank accounts in the next 60 minutes.
880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips.
2,000,000 documents will be lost by the IRS this year(that wouldn't be so bad if they would lose the right ones!).
103,260 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly during the year.
114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped/year.
Gravity will not work for 14 minutes every day.

As you can see, in the real world, 99% really isn't very good. With that in mind, how about we try to achieve 100% in everything we do from now on. OK?

Thank you, and God be with you!