\def\vb{\vskip\baselineskip}
\hsize=5.5truein\hoffset=0.5truein
\vsize=8truein\voffset=0.5truein
\font\sm=cmr7
\raggedbottom
%
\centerline{\bf The World According to Student Bloopers}
\vb
\centerline{Richard Lederer}
\centerline{St. Paul's School}
\centerline{\sm (Reprinted without permission)}
\vb{\narrower\narrower
One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is
receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay.  I have pasted
together the following ``history'' of the world from certifiably genuine student
bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eigth grade
through college level.  Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.
\vb}
The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies.  They lived in the Sarah
Dessert and traveled by Camelot.  The climate of the Sarah is such that the
inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated
by irritation.  The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge
triangular cube.  The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and
Spain.
\vb
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures.  In the first book of the
Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.  One of their
children, Cain, asked ``Am I my brother's son?''  God asked Abraham to sacrifice
Issac on Mount Montezuma.  Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark.
Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they
did not take to it.  One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
\vb
Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw.  Moses led
them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made
without any ingredients.  Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the
ten commandments.  David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar.  He
fougth with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times.
Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.
\vb
Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history.  The Greeks invented three
kinds of columns---Corinthian, Doric and Ironic.  They also had myths.  A myth
is a female moth.  One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the
River Stynx until he became intolerable.  Achilles appears in ``The Illiad'', by
Homer.  Homer also wrote the ``Oddity,'' in which Penelope was the last hardship
that Ulysses endured on his journey.  Actually, Homer was not written by Homer
but by another man of that name.
\vb
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice.
They killed him.  Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.
\vb
In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and
threw the java.  The reward to the victor was a coral wreath.  The government
of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands.
There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't
climb over to see what their neighbors were doing.  When they fought the
Parisians,  the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.
\vb
Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks.  History call people Romans
because they never stayed in one place for very long.  At Roman banquets, the
guests wore garlic in their hair.  Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the
battlefields of Gaul.  The Ides of March killed him because they thought he
was going to be made king.  Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor
subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
\vb
Then came the Middle Ages.  King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur
lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the
Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the
victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks.  Finally, the Magna Carta
provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
\vb
In midevil times most of the people were alliterate.  The greatest writer
of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote
literature.
Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple
while standing on his son's head.
\vb
The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of
their human being.  Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg
for selling papal indulgences.  He died a horrible death, being excommunicated
by a bull.  It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that
made him the father of the Renaissance.  It was an age of great inventions and
discoveries.  Gutenberg invented the Bible.  Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical
figure because he invented cigarettes.  Another important invention was the
circulation of blood.  Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot
clipper.
\vb
The government of England was a limited mockery.  Henry VIII found walking
difficult because he had an abbess on his knee.  Queen Elizabeth was the
``Virgin Queen.''
As a queen she was a success.  When Elizabeth exposed herself before
her troops, they all shouted ``hurrah.''  Then her navy went out and
defeated the Spanish Armadillo.
\vb
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear.  Shakespear
never made much money and is famous only because of his plays.  He lived in
Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors.  In one
of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving
himself in a long soliloquy.  In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince
Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood.  Romeo and Juliet are an
example of a heroic couplet.  Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel
Cervantes.  He wrote ``Donkey Hote''.  The next great author was John Milton.
Milton wrote ``Paradise Lost.''  Then his wife dies and he wrote ``Paradise
Regained.''
\vb
During the Renaissance America began.  Christopher Columbus was a great
navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic.  His ships
were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.  Later the Pilgrims
crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim's Progress.  When they
landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill
rolling their was hoops before them.  The Indian squabs carried porposies on
their back.  Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their
cabooses, which proved very fatal to them.  The winter of 1620 was a hard one
for the settlers.  Many people died and many babies were born.  Captain John
Smith was responsible for all this.
\vb
One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in
their tea.  Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post without
stamps.  During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over
stone walls.  The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing.  Finally, the
colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.
\vb
Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress.
Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the
Declaration of Independence.  Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his
clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm.  He invented electricity
by rubbing cats backwards and declared ``a horse divided against itself
cannot stand.'' Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
\vb
George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father
of Our Country.  Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to
secure domestic hostility.  Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the
right to keep bare arms.
\vb
Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent.  Lincoln's mother
died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own
hands.  When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat.  He said,
``In onion there is strength.''  Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address
while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope.  He
also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave
the ex-Negroes citizenship.  But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch
the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims.  On the night of April 14, 1865,
Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in
a moving picture show.  The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a
sopposedly insane actor.  This ruined Booth's career.
\vb
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time.  Voltare
invented electricity and also wrote a book called ``Candy''.  Gravity was
invented by Issac Walton.  It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the
apples are falling off the trees.
\vb
Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel.  Handel
was half German, half Italian and half English.  He was very large.  Bach died
from 1750 to the present.  Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf.  He
was so deaf he wrote loud music.  He took long walks in the forest even when
everyone was calling for him.  Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for
this.
\vb
France was in a very serious state.  The French Revolution was accomplished
before it happened.  The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution,
and it catapulted into Napoleon.  During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned
heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes.  Then the Spanish gorrilas came
down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks.  Napoleon became ill with
bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained.  He wanted an heir to
inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him
any children.
\vb
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in
the East and the sun sets in the West.  Queen Victoria was the longest queen.
She sat on a thorn for 63 years.  He reclining years and finally the end of
her life were exemplatory of a great personality.  Her death was the final
event which ended her reign.
\vb
The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts.
The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up.  Cyrus
McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy.  Louis Pastuer discovered a cure
for rabbis.  Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the ``Organ of the
Species''.  Madman Curie discovered radium.  And Karl Marx became one of the
Marx Brothers.
\vb
The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf,
ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
\bye
