Too perfect

Macario González Villaurrutia was the most exceptional person ever. He was born under one of the wealthiest families, and he received the love and affection from everyone except his parents, because they were too successful to worry about anyone besides themselves.

During his first months, Macario was a happy baby; he always ate his food and never cried or got sick, but, after a while, this worried everyone except their parents so much they got him to the hospital. The doctor did him a simple medical check and concluded he had perfect health and there was nothing to worry about. However, to corroborate what they already know, they performed all kind of tests and analysis whose only result was a bill so abusive no insurance covered it.

After some time, Macario entered one of the world's most prestigious educational institutions, and from the beginning he was considered a genius since there was never an exam, exhibition or contest where he didn't get a perfect grade. As expected, such achievements brought countless institutions and even universities to offer all the scholarships available to him. In addition, a wave of reporters and journalists began to harass him and his family and colleagues for the sole purpose of publishing redundant articles about a child whom they hardly knew in reality.

Soon, nonetheless, Macario's insistent perfection caused students, administrators and parents to suspect all his achievements were only due to an incredible ability to cheat in some many ways, and to countless bribes and extortions that surely involved everyone except them.

Therefore, and in order to preserve the institution's prestige, the directors subjected Macario to a series of increasingly complicated exams, where, in addition to isolating him from the rest of the world and monitoring him even during his rest periods, they measured and analyzed his brain waves, heart rate, and other vital signs that actually only provided incredibly insignificant data for the experiment.

Still, the results were astonishing: first, Macario's brain worked with perfect efficiency when remembering or calculating an answer, and second, when Macario faced a question whose answer he did not know, he simply chose one at random and was right every time.

Faced with such results, and because science is based on mistrust, the managers refused to believe such an unlikely reality and assured there must be a perfectly rational explanation for such a perfectly irrational case, so they concluded the results of their experiment were inconclusive and, after publishing countless articles about its failure, they determined Macario was either too intelligent or too dishonest to continue his studies within the institution, so he was expelled.

Time passed and, during his youth, Macario stood out not only for his intelligence, but also for his innate ability to seduce anyone with whom he struck up a conversation or, in some cases, just exchanged a glance. As expected, this caused confusion in some, certainty in others and endless conflicts that ranged from insults and threats to crimes of passion that involved both the police force and the news.

Still, Macario was involved in a series of relationships where there was never any discussion, attack of jealousy, infidelity or any other toxic behavior, since his love partners dedicated themselves entirely to serving and satisfying him in any way possible, although it should be clarified that he never asked or demanded anything from them, a behavior they considered extremely humble and chivalrous, and an irrefutable proof of the love he must feel for them.

These relationships, however, ended within a few weeks because these couples considered Macario deserved someone better: someone so perfect he surely did not exist.

In short, Macario's love affairs were so brief and one-sided that he never actually experienced love, in the first place.

As an adult, Macario dedicated his life to altruism. He donated a large part of the family fortune to different charities. However, the only thing this caused, without counting the usual harassment from the media, was these institutions and many more to ask, beg and demand increasingly constant and larger donations that benefited fewer and fewer people.

So Macario put charity aside and began researching diseases and how to eradicate them. In time he discovered the cure for all known diseases and, with it, made a series of medicines so cheap, so effective, and so inconvenient for pharmaceutical companies that it was immediately withdrawn from the market.

Macario then invested the rest of the family fortune in distributing his medicines for free to whoever needed them. However, being free, people believed them to be useless or even dangerous and preferred to stick with the expensive and vaguely effective medications they were used to.

In the end, Macario published numerous articles about his discoveries, but they were all ignored by the scientific community for the simple fact that Macario lacked a medical license.

After losing it all, Macario lived on the streets. Years passed and a shoemaker, who had read several articles about him, recognized him and, in order to verify his supposed perfection, hired him as an assistant. In his workshop, he showed him some of the shoes he had made and asked him to make his own. Macario took the tools and, with tired mastery, made a pair of shoes that, according to the shoemaker, had to be the most perfect shoes that had ever existed.

"Yes", responded Macario, "but I like yours better".