Humorous Errors on Student Essays

Some students have a way of writing things in a slightly different manner than intended, as demonstrated in the following excerpts from tests and essays of eight graders through college, complied by Richard Lederer, a teacher in St Paul.

• The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.

• The Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

• The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created by an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, “Am I my brother’s son?”

• Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

• Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.

• Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.

• Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

• In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and threw the java.

• It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood.

• Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

• The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday.

• Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her death was the final event that ended her reign.

• The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the Pilgrims. Many died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

• Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats together. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

• Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable when apples are falling off the trees.

• Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept in the attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present.

• Handel was a great composer. He was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large.

• Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

• The nineteenth century was a time of many inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up.

• William Tell shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.

• The sun never sets on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.

• Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin that he built with his own hands.

___________

Quote for the Day – "Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness." Woody Allen

___________

Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a few dogs and is a former college instructor (among other things) who has long ago achieved oneness, but still working on twoness.

___________

-

-

Men, Women & Fashion

When I was a young corporate stooge, I always wore a dark three-piece suit with a flashy necktie. Now that I’m older and wiser, I wonder what took me so long to burn all my neckties.

The necktie dates back to 1660 when a crack military regiment from Croatia visited France. They had recently defeated Turkey and were presented to King Louis XIV in Paris where they were honored for their glorious victory.

King Louis XIV apparently had an eye for men’s fashion. He was particularly enchanted with the brightly colored silk handkerchiefs adorning the necks of the Croatian officers. Being a man of power and whimsy, he soon created his own regiment of silk-handkerchief-adorned soldiers which he called the Royal Cravattes.

France has always been a country of pretentious snobs and girly-men. Their major accomplishment for the betterment of mankind was the invention of the soufflé.

Before long, the new fashion statement made its way across the channel to England. By 1700, no man in Britain was considered a gentleman without a cravat or necktie. Some cravats were even worn so high that a man had to turn his whole body just to turn his head.

Unfortunately, this fashion folly eventually drifted across the Atlantic Ocean to the colonies.

To this very day, men in America, although a fairly enlightened species, still wear neckties.

The only conceivable logical reason a man would wrap a fabric around his neck is to keep warm. Short of that, the only other plausible explanation is that men wrap a fabric around their necks because other men wrap a fabric around their necks and they desperately want to be associated with them.

Obviously, men are followers of followers, like a flock of sheep. And if you're a sheep following other sheep, you only get one view of the world and it isn’t pretty.

A man who wears a necktie is a man who cannot think for himself. He's merely playing a role. If his attire is dishonest, perhaps he is dishonest as well.

Politicians all wear neckties. So do bankers, lawyers and used car salesmen. None of them would score very high on a Trust-O-Meter.

The biggest idiots of all are the men who wear a bow tie. They consider themselves to be rebels. But in reality, they are merely followers with bad taste. A man who wears a bow tie is a man in serious need of a brain transplant.

The functionless necktie, worn by men under the illusion of being socially acceptable within the circle of men who wear neckties, is overwhelming proof that men are shallow seekers of approval. They do what other men do simply to blend in with the crowd.

Men dress to be like other men.

On the other hand, women have a flair for fashion, which changes with the seasons. They don't want to blend in, they want to stand out and be noticed.

A man is as good as he has to be, a woman is as bad as she dares.

Women dress to be annoying to other women.

Men are sheep -- women are from Venus.

___________

Quote for the Day – "Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them." Marilyn Monroe

___________

Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a couple of dogs and is the proud owner of zero neckties.

___________

-

-