THE WORLD ACCORDING TO STUDENT BLOOPERS
by Richard Lederer
St. Paul's School
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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 allot.
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 intolerable.
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 Romans 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 Ids 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, 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 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.
The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found
walking difficult because he had a abbes 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 Armidillo.
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,
commedies, and errors; In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet
rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long solioguy. 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 by
the Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before
them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises 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 hard a hard one for the
settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John
Smith was responsible for all this.
One of causes of the Revolutionary Wars 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 were 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 of 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 whil traveling from Washington to
Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also freed the slaves by
signing the Emasculation Proclamation, the Clue Clux Clan would
torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It
claimed it represented law and orfer. 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 enlightment was a reasonable time.
Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy
Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is cheifly noticable 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
Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Wurope were trembling in their
shoes. Then the Spanish gorillas came down from the hill 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 Josephene 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 Pastuer 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 assination of the Arh-Duck by
a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
(
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