Sensory overload

When I was in grade school, four times a year I would proudly (or not-so-proudly) bring home my report card and hand it to my parents. And four times a year, my father would remind me of the report-cards HE brought home from grade school, telling me that while letter-grades A through D would be written in blue or black ink, the F’s were always in red.

Maybe it was to keep the kids honest and to stop them from adding a vertical line and changing the F to an A, but I think it was done strictly for shock-value. (These were the days before computer-generated report cards. And, for the record, I never came home with an F).