The World According to Student Bloopers
Richard Lederer, St. Paul’s School
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 eighth grade through
college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.
The inhabitants of ancient 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 Pyramids are a range of mountains between France
and Spain.
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, once asked, “Am I my brother’s son?” God asked Abraham to
sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother’s
birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be
patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, gave
refuse to the Israelites.
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 fought
with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon,
one of David’s sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.
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 intollerable. Achilles appears in The Iliad, 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.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice.
They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.
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
Athens was democratic because 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 with the
Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.
Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History calls people Romans
because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the
guests wore garlics in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the
battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he
was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his
poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames. King Arthur
lived in the Age of Shivery. King Harold mustarded his troops before the
Battle of Hastings. Joan of Arc was cannonized by Bernard Shaw, and 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.
In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of
the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote
literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an
apple while standing on his son’s head.
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 invention 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.
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.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear
never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived at
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 Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John
Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise
Regained.
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 this was known as Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at
Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill
rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on
their backs. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their
cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1680 was a hard one
for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John
Smith was responsible for all this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their
tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without
stamps. During the War, the 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.
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.
George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of
Our Country. Then the Constitution the United States was adopted to secure
domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to
keep bare arms.
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 wrote the Gettysburg Address while
traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope.
Fourteenth Amendment gave ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan
would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It claimed
it represented law and odor. 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 supposingly insane
actor. This ruined Booth’s career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare
invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented
by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are
falling off the trees.
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.
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 Napolenonic Wars, the
crowned heads of Europe were tremoling in their shoes. Then the Spanish
gorillas 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 inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she
couldn’t bear children.
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. Her 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.
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 of telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure
for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the
Species. Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the
Marx brothers.
The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf,
ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
