Slacker Blog Post: Funny Test Answers

Due to the inordinate amount of traveling that I will be doing this week, I am going to post a slacker blog. 

As another school years rolls to an end, it’s time for some of the best test answers that teachers have submitted.  Although I could only really include the relatively clean ones, I’m willing to bet that the kids who had the guts to actually hand them in sound a lot smarter than the person who devised the test.  Note that the definition of a “best” answer doesn’t mean that the test taker received full or any credit at all.  

Q:  What do we call the science of classifying living things?

A:  Racism

Q:  Name four heavy metals and their symbols.

A:  Megadeath, Anthrax, Slayer and Metallica

Q:  What’s your greatest accomplishment so far?

A:  Starting this homework

Q:  What hasn’t happened yet that you are looking forward to?

A:  I haven’t started question #3 yet, and I’m looking forward to it.

Q:  What have you been given to start you on your journey?

A:  A pencil

Q:  What’s new, interesting and appealing?

A:  The question after this one.

Q:  What’s old, worn out, and boring?

A:  The question before this one

Q:  The first cells were probably _________

A:  Lonely

Q:  Imagine you lived in the same time as Abraham Lincoln.  What would you say to him?

A:  Don’t go see that play.

Q:  Explain briefly what hard water is.

A:  Ice

Q:  In the space below, please enter any comments about this course or instructor not covered above.

A:  If I had only one hour more to live, I’d spend it in this class because it feels like an eternity.

Q:  If Miranda cannot see anything when she looks in her microscope, suggest one reason why.

A:  She is blind.

Q:  To change centimeters to meters, you ______?

A:  Take out the “centi”

Q:  Explain the saying, “Some people don’t look up until they are flat on their backs”.

A:  It means some people can’t look up because something is wrong with their necks.  For example, if someone gets kicked in the neck by a kung fu midget, they won’t be able to look up.

Q:  Where was the Declaration of Independence signed:

A:  At the bottom

 

Q: There are 300 students in the class.  Mary and Mark want to find out the class’ favorite color.  Mary asks 30 people.  Mark asks 150 people.  Mark says that his conclusion is more likely to be right than Mary’s.  Why does Mark think he is right.

A:  Because Mark is a man

Q:  Explain why phosphorous trichloride is polar.

A:  Because God made it that way

Q:  What type of attractive force or bond holds the sodium ions and chloride ions together in a crystal of sodium chloride?

A:  James Bond

Q:  Assess Fashion House’s decision to locate its factory near Birmingham.  Is Birmingham the right location for this type of business?

A:  No, because Birmingham isn’t very fashionable.

 

Q:  Name one of the early Romans’ greatest achievements.

A:  Learning to speak Latin

Q:  Write a short story in as few words as possible.  The story must contain the following three elements:  religion, sexuality and mystery.

A:  “Good God, I’m pregnant.  I wonder who did it.” 

Congratulations to all the teachers out there who made it through another year.  You are candidates for sainthood.

A Different Mother's Day

Flowers would be good, I thought, selecting an appealing bouquet from a nearby small, upscale market’s display.  Maybe one of her once-favorite fish fillet sandwiches and a soda from the golden-arched fast food purveyor would bring a smile to her face.  It couldn’t be like it used to be, with beribboned boxes holding pretty nightgowns or dinner at a nice restaurant with family gathered around.  I wasn’t sure what “family” meant anymore, with children scattered geographically and both my father and brother gone forever.  I shook my head to rid it of the ridiculous snippet of music that played there so often these days…”and the cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone…”

 

Would she even know who I was today – her only daughter – or would she gaze blankly at me because I no longer had the flowing blonde hair and unlined face of my youth?  As I walked into the Long Term Care facility, the floors were crowded with other families making the same journey: adult children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with small gifts and balloons in tow.  I entered her shared room.  There were no private rooms here, just curtains that could be pulled across to mimic that illusion.  Her roommate moaned, “Lady, lady…somebody help me, help me, please” over and over.  It seemed callous to ignore her, but she repeated those words most of the day, every day, unless she was sleeping.  It would have outraged me to have my mother in that room with the constant, droning distress calls if not for the fact that she is deaf.  Mom was the perfect roommate for her.

Would she be awake?  I usually had to time my visits to fall either just before or just after a meal.  With so few visitors and deprived of the sensory stimulation of conversation, she slept 18-20 hours each day, preferring to retreat to her memories for comfort.  As I moved her empty wheelchair to sit in her bedside chair, she smiled hesitantly when she saw me, googling her brain in search of recognition.  My current face wasn’t on file, so she waited for me to provide the clues.

“Hi, mom.  It’s Kathy.  Happy Mother’s Day.  How are you?”

“Kathy?”  She would often be unsure at first, so I picked up the lined school notebook and pen to “talk” to her, the only way she would be able to “hear” me.  I wrote, explaining who I was, and pointed to the picture she kept of me in my graduation gown.

She nodded, “Oh, that’s my daughter,” smiling sweetly.  I pointed to the picture and then to myself.  Her brain clicked suddenly and she laughed – at herself, I hoped, rather than the differences in how I looked between the picture and today’s reality.  

“How’s Johnny?” she asked, hoping that my brother would be visiting today too.  “He hasn’t been feeling too well, mom, but maybe he’ll be able to stop by later,” I reassured her.  My brother died over a year ago, but we decided to spare her that painful news. 

“Daddy was here yesterday.”  I blinked and then raised my eyebrows at the news.  My father has been dead for 12 years.  “He tried to convince me that we should have another child, and I told him that two were enough.  We can’t afford to have three!”   I used to try to bring her back to the present by telling her how long he has been gone, but no longer.  I’ve come to realize that the comfort of memories are the only real comforts she has left.

I showed her the floral offering that I’d brought and put them in a vase with water.  She inhaled their fragrance and smiled appreciatively.  The decades-old picture of her tending her azaleas and candy tuft flashed in my head.  Her sturdy German hands worked the soil as she grunted in sweaty exertion in the warm spring sun.  Dad stood nearby, trimming the hedges in his khakis and undershirt, as Mom fussed at him not to stand too closely to the laundry drying on the line nearby.  

Now I was doing it, too.  

I’d been there for five minutes, and her eyes were beginning to droop in anticipation of her three hour afternoon nap.  She began a brief conversation that was garbled by fatigue.  I smiled and nodded, having no idea what she just said.  Then I kissed her and waited until she fell asleep.  Happy mother’s day, mom.

It Takes Guts to be an Organ Donor: Facebook's Newest Enhancement

If you missed the announcement yesterday, Facebook has added a new enhancement that will likely be a huge game changer for the current 114,000 people in the U.S. alone who are barely clinging to life, hoping that many of us will respond.  An average of 17 of these die every day, still waiting.

In a eureka moment of brilliance, Dr. Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, helped bring the idea of registering for organ donation to Facebook.  But most of the announcements I've read are quoting Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg giving credit to his doctor-to-be girlfriend.  Yet no matter whose idea it really was, less than one day after the announcement, Donate Life America - the national umbrella organization for local registration groups - reports that organ donor registrations have already spiked more in one day than they typically get in a month.

Not all response to the program has been positive, however.  Such comments as "What's next, Facebook....my DNA sample?" and "Keep your hands off my organs, Zuckerberg!" have cropped up by users wary of the social media juggernaut's information mining. 

Personally, I don't care if Facebook knows I'm registered as an organ donor.  My attitude is that if I can help one or more fellow human beings live when I die, what's the downside?  Some have raised the concern that they might receive less heroic care if the enticement of their organs is on the line.  Will it make me a less attractive corpse?  If I'm dead, I hardly think I'll care about that aspect.

If you'd like to register on Facebook for this program, it's easy.  Simply click on your timeline and then select "Life Events" and then "health and wellness".  It will bring up the organ donor option.  When you click on that option, it brings up the Donate Life America website where you will be directed to your local donor registry organization.  Just do it.    

Fifty Shades of Red

After seeing several online postings and a segment of NBC's Today Show, I decided to see what all the buzz was about E.L. James' work of fiction, "Fifty Shades of Grey".  I almost didn't buy it because it ticked me off that the Kindle download was more expensive than the paperback edition.  After a few days of principled chest-beating, I caved and spitefully bought the less expensive paperback, especially when I saw that I could recoup nearly all my money by selling the carefully-read novel on Ebay.  The price differential wouldn't have bothered me so much if it were just one book, but this is a trilogy. And given what I'd heard about the book, I preferred the comparative anonymity of my Kindle if I were to be seen reading it in public.

Reading the book in public turned out to not be an issue.  I sat down to read about 7 p.m. a few evenings ago and read non-stop until I finished the 600+ page book around 8 a.m. the next morning.  Reading marathons don't strike very often in my household.  I'm quite embarrassed to say that the last time that happened was when I got hooked on the four-book "Twilight" series, and I came close to it on the "Hunger Games" trilogy, reading all three books in a week..

What kind of story sucks a reader in so completely that she abandons the siren song of blissful slumber?  Uhhhh, well, frankly....sex (she says as she looks at the ground and scrapes shoe distractedly).  It's not that the writing is great.  If the main character - who has been dubbed the "S&M Cinderella"-uttered the words, "Oh my" or "Wow" one more time, I was going to punch her.  The descriptions become repetitive.  How many different ways can you describe one of the most basic human behaviors?  Despite its shortcomings, the soft porn novel has hit the New York Times Bestseller List with a vengeance.  It has allowed millions of women to eagerly wait for the brown cardboard box to hit their porch.   And only the order fulfillment folks at Amazon know.

The story is so blush-worthy that the author herself was extremely self-conscious while giving a televised interview.  And why, in the post-feminist age of independent women, is a narrative that extols the seduction of an innocent college student by a twisted, young billionaire so enticing?  I'm afraid I don't have the language skills to explain that and have it still be printed here.

I can only say that if men want an advantage when it comes to picking up women, they have an extra weapon.  They need not restrict themselves to the gyms, the Whole Foods aisles or the bars in Fells Point.  All they need to do is head for the nearest bookstore, cafe or coffeehouse and find a woman with her head buried in one of these books... or wait for the upcoming movie.  You're halfway home.