Another Pathetic Moment of Triumph for my Pathetic Scrapbook (for my Pathetic Old Age)

Had to hear some complaints about the testing director from some of my classes today. "Oh man, she's so mean." "God, do you know, like, if you don't have the test number for the quiz you're supposed to take, she, like, yells at you? She can't just turn around and look it up?" "Yeah, she's a total Nazi."

If I were Jon Stewart, I could do a whole bit on bad Nazi analogies. But I did have one card to play.

"Remember that one time we were reading the Declaration of Independence?" I asked them. "And we got to the word 'inalienable'?" And you didn't know what it meant?"

Nods. General agreement. Some of the sharper ones are already starting to look abashed.

"And I told you to reach under your desks and grab that thing called a dictionary, and look it up?" Pause for drama. "And you said it was too much work?"

Pause. Beat.

"So I'll see you one Nazi testing director," I said carefully, "and raise you twenty-five honors seniors."

Nobody took the bet. But when we got to "interposition" in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, they did take their dictionaries.