August 17, 1990
Student Bloopers
The World According to Student Bloopers
Richard Lederer
St. Paul's School
(Reprinted without permission)
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 eight grade through college
level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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."
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.
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.
Delegates from the original thirteen states forme$5he 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 Matha Curtis and in due time became
the Father of Our Country. Them 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 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 supposedly 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 Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in
the Autumn, when the apples are flaling 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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