'The World According to Student Bloopers'

by Richard Lederer

St. Paul's School

(Spring 1987, Verbatim, The Language Quarterly, Vol. XIII, No. 4)

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 certi-

fiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the

United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully,

and you will learn a lot.

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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. They Pramids are a

range 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 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 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 extin-

guished 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

Wittenburg 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 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

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 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 were 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 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 while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on

the back of an envelope. He also freed the slaves by signing 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. 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

Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling 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 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.