The World According to Student Bloopers
\nRichard Lederer, St. Paul’s School<\/p>\n
One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving
\nthe occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together
\nthe following “history of the world” from certifiably genuine student bloopers
\ncollected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through
\ncollege level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.<\/p>\n
The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah
\nDessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the
\ninhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are
\ncultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a
\nhuge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France
\nand Spain.<\/p>\n
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible,
\nGuinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their
\nchildren, Cain, once asked, “Am I my brother’s son?” God asked Abraham to
\nsacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother’s
\nbirth mark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be
\npatriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, gave
\nrefuse to the Israelites.<\/p>\n
Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them
\nto the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without
\nany ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten
\nCommandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought
\nwith the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon,
\none of David’s sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.<\/p>\n
Without the Greeks we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks invented three kinds
\nof columns – Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a
\nfemale moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the
\nRiver Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in The Iliad, by
\nHomer. Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship
\nthat Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer
\nbut by another man of that name.<\/p>\n
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice.
\nThey killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.<\/p>\n
In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw
\nthe java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of
\nAthens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands. There
\nwere no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn’t climb
\nover to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought with the
\nPersians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History calls people Romans
\nbecause they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the
\nguests wore garlics in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the
\nbattlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he
\nwas going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his
\npoor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.<\/p>\n
Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames. King Arthur
\nlived in the Age of Shivery. King Harold mustarded his troops before the
\nBattle of Hastings. Joan of Arc was cannonized by Bernard Shaw, and victims
\nof the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally the Magna Carta
\nprovided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.<\/p>\n
In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of
\nthe time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote
\nliterature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an
\napple while standing on his son’s head.<\/p>\n
The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their
\nhuman being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for
\nselling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by
\na bull. It was the painter Donatello’s interest in the female nude that made
\nhim the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great invention and
\ndiscoveries.<\/p>\n
Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure
\nbecause he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the
\ncirculation of blood.<\/p>\n
Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.<\/p>\n
The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking
\ndifficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the
\n“Virgin Queen.” As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed
\nherself before her troops, they all shouted, “hurrah.” Then her navy went out
\nand defeated the Spanish Armadillo.<\/p>\n
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear
\nnever made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived at
\nWindsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies, and errors.<\/p>\n
In one of Shakespear’s famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by
\nrelieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to
\nconvince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet
\nare an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear
\nwas Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John
\nMilton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise
\nRegained.<\/p>\n
During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great
\nnavigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships
\nwere called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed
\nthe Ocean, and this was known as Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at
\nPlymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill
\nrolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on
\ntheir backs. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their
\ncabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1680 was a hard one
\nfor the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John
\nSmith was responsible for all this.<\/p>\n
One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their
\ntea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without
\nstamps. During the War, the Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over
\nstone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the
\ncolonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.<\/p>\n
Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress.
\nThomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the
\nDeclaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his
\nclothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented
\nelectricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared, “A horse divided against
\nitself cannot stand.” Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.<\/p>\n
George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of
\nOur Country. Then the Constitution the United States was adopted to secure
\ndomestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to
\nkeep bare arms.<\/p>\n
Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in
\ninfancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands.
\nWhen Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, “In onion
\nthere is strength.” Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while
\ntraveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope.
\nFourteenth Amendment gave ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan
\nwould torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It claimed
\nit represented law and odor. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to
\nthe theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture
\nshow. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane
\nactor. This ruined Booth’s career.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare
\ninvented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented
\nby Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are
\nfalling off the trees.<\/p>\n
Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was
\nhalf German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Bach died
\nfrom 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He
\nwas so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when
\neveryone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for
\nthis.<\/p>\n
France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished
\nbefore it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French
\nRevolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napolenonic Wars, the
\ncrowned heads of Europe were tremoling in their shoes. Then the Spanish
\ngorillas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon’s flanks. Napoleon
\nbecame ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He
\nwanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she
\ncouldn’t bear children.<\/p>\n
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the
\nEast and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She
\nsat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her
\nlife were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event
\nwhich ended her reign.<\/p>\n
The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The
\ninvention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus
\nMcCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
\nSamuel Morse invented a code of telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure
\nfor rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the
\nSpecies. Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the
\nMarx brothers.<\/p>\n
The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf,
\nushered in a new error in the anals of human history.<\/p>\n
