Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Sept. 3, 2012

No right answers



According to an Aug. 27 article by Ty Tagami in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, another Atlanta school teacher has been fired over the Atlanta Public School System’s cheating scandal, which has been under investigation for over two years. In the summer of 2010, Dobbs Elementary School teacher Shayla Smith apparently thought she was just giving the students taking the fifth- grade math test she was proctoring some much needed help by showing them the correct answers. This is nothing new to Atlanta schools, since over 180 teachers were caught doing the same kind of cheating, and over 100 of them have already either resigned or been given their walking papers. But Smith’s comment, that she gave the students answers because they were, as she put it, “dumb as hell,” was a bit unusual.

Now somebody in Dobbs Elementary School, in the summer of 2010, involved in a fifth-grade math test, may have indeed been “dumb as hell,” but we here at Grammar Central strongly suspect it was the proctor, not the students. They got the answers. She got fired.

I say all of that because it is Labor Day, which has traditionally signaled the beginning of the school year. Oh sure, I know that school nowadays starts long before Labor Day because of factors like Daylight Saving Time and Global Warming, but I am old, so humor me. Labor Day still means the beginning of the school year to me.

I do not for a moment believe that any of our educators here in Cherokee County would help their students cheat. Teachers in northeast Alabama are a proud, independent bunch, who believe that there are some things students should do on their own. At least that’s the way it was when I was a kid.

With all of that in mind, here is a little test for students, just to assess their learning skills. It is not a hard test, and will be presented in what we used to call the “multiple guess” format. A lot of kids I knew, myself included, often did really well in the multiple guess tests by simply flipping a coin or doing “one potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four” and then making our choices. I will not indicate which answers are correct, because I, personally, have no idea.


1. Read the following sentence carefully:


“Crouched on a tree limb, her tail high in the air, twitching nervously, old Mrs. Ferguson finally spied her cat, Lucy.”


Something about that sentence is bothersome. What is it?

A. If she falls she could break a hip.

B. Will the old lady come down on her own, or will a neighbor have to call the fire department?

C. Lucy is a stupid name for a cat.



2. How would you correct the following classified ad:


“LOST: Purse belonging to elderly lady made of alligator skin.”


A. There should be a phone number.

B. All old people look like that.

C. It needs more commas.



3. Christopher Columbus was:

A. A great marinator.

B. From Ohio.

C. The man who piloted three ships, the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe, to the New World.

D. He founded Mayflower Van Lines, Inc.



4. If your grandmother walks five miles a day for her health, how long will it be before she gets to Fort Wayne, Indiana?

A. I thought there wouldn’t be any math.

B. That would depend on whether she takes the Interstate or walks up Highway 27 from Rome.

C. My mee-maw would have to stop every five minutes. For gas.



5. How would you correct the following classified ad?


“WANTED: A room by a quiet, well-mannered lady 50 ft. long by 20 ft. wide.”


A. I saw that movie. It was called “Attack of the 50 ft. Woman,” and it was awful sad.

B. Except for the part where Darryl Hannah started outgrowing her clothes, which was very exciting.

C. I would add a photo.



6. What is wrong with the following actual ad?


“It takes many ingredients to make Jimmy Dean sausage, but the most important ingredient is our people.”

A. Nobody needs to know what goes into sausage.

B. My daddy worked for them for awhile, but he said he didn’t like their retirement plan.

C. I read where the natives in New Guinea used to eat their people before they got cable TV.



7. Today Larry is one-sixth the age of his father. In twenty years he will be one half the age of his father, and in forty-five years he will be two-thirds as old as his father. If X represents Larry’s age and Y represents his father’s age, how old is Larry now, and how many years will it take Larry to realize that, try as hard as he can, he will never catch up?

A. If this is Algebra, then I haven’t had it yet.

B. I’m still working on the one about Columbus and the Mayflower.

C. I have a doctor’s excuse not to take math due to a skin condition. I can show you the subscription for excrement cream I got yesterday.



8. Who said “The buck stops here?”

A. A president. I think it was Donald Trump.

B. Some deer hunter somewhere.

C. I seen a woman on a bench on First Avenue in Birmingham once who said “the bus stops here,” but I don’t know her name.



9. Who said “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum and I can move the world”

A: An ancient Greek named Archie something or other.

B. Tom Arnold after his 1990 wedding, explaining how he planned to get Roseanne Barr over the threshold.

C. Not me. It must of been somebody in the back of the room.



Again, there are no right answers. But now that you’ve completed the test, you may collect all the lettered answers and make a word out of them.