Challenging social rules

[pegkerr]

This was a comment I made at sartorias's journal at a discussion about social rules, and I thought I'd re-post it here.

I vividly remember two instances when I was growing up when on separate occasions two teachers told me something I knew was DEAD WRONG.

One was in kindergarten, when another child was drawing a (rather inept) picture of a turkey. She painstakingly drew a circle on the turkey's tummy, and told the teacher, "That's the turkey's belly button."

Now even I, at the tender age of five, knew that turkeys didn't have belly buttons. But I was genuinely startled by the teacher's response. "Linda," she sniffed, "it isn't nice to talk about belly buttons."

I knew, even then, that there was nothing wrong with any part of the body. Even belly buttons.

The other time happened in eighth grade. I was stopped by a teacher in the hall. "Margaret," he told me loftily (he could never grasp the fact that I went by Peg, not Margaret), "ladies don't whistle." (Edited to add: Oh yeah, and I just remembered: he actually quoted to me, "Whistling girls and crowing hens/Always come to some bad ends.")

Again, I was so startled by the immediate and sure knowledge that he was wrong that I didn't make the obvious answer until he had passed.

I was a lady.

And I damn well could whistle anytime I liked.

Tell me about a time a teacher or a parent or someone else in authority told you something that you knew immediately was wrong.

Comments

[mlion.livejournal.com]

When I was in 5th grade, my teacher was named "Miss Barbie". Our entire class liked basketball, but the hoops were quite old. New hoops were installed, but Miss Barbie told us that the girls weren't allowed to use them.

It was an obvious lie. I went down to the principal's office, and asked the principal if it was true. He was a very nice guy, and promptly made an announcement over the intercom that the new hoops were for *everyone*.

Barbie had it in for me the rest of the year. I would have done it again in a heartbeat. She was wrong, and we both knew it.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Here's my story of how I handled a similar incident.

[stinaleigh.livejournal.com]

My sort of similar story about 5th grade isn't really about gender discrimination but intelligence. When I was in 5th grade I, and about 3 others in my section, about 10 of us overall were pulled out once a week for advanced gifted/talented stuff. We did projects and puzzles, and advanced math, etc. Well in upper elementary it was the teacher's option whether to let the class have a morning recess. Our teacher would regularly give the class the bonus/reward of morning recess while we were at our supplemental instruction. She didn't see what we were doing as work and not play. And for us it wasn't recess, it was work a lot of the time, even if it was more enjoyable than the classroom. We brought it up to our parents and she change, or at least made sure not to do it all the time then, but I think that may be why she didn't like me all that much. Or it could have been that when I was in 5th grade I knew more than she did.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

When I was in kindergarten, we had to color in pictures of various things--all I can remember was that one of them was a tulip, but I'm sure it was something innane like firetrucks and balls and the like. I colored the tulip in black. My teacher marked it wrong. I brought in the flower catalog we'd been looking at the night before the assignment which had black tulips as proof that I was right, and the teacher still marked it wrong. She said "It's not that your color was wrong, it's just that it wasn't the color it was *supposed* to be." (I think maybe it was supposed to be red?)

And from that point on I knew, nice as she was in general, that teachers could be wrong. (The following year I had the worst teacher in my whole school career who used to have the principal come and paddle one of the little boys (who I suspect was probably ADD, not just 'bad' like she said he was) in the hallway outside our classroom frequently. That whole year, I lived in terror of doing something 'bad' and getting paddled.)

[sternel.livejournal.com]

When I was in the 8th Grade, a boy pulled my bra strap on my way down the stairs after final bell. He thought it was hysterical, and so did everybody else. I wanted to sink through the floor and die -- I wasn't sure if it was the pain of the elastic against my back or the echo of the smack of it up the stairwell.

Or maybe it was just everyone's laughter.

I got home and informed my mother, and my mother being my mother, she had the principal on speed dial. School bureaucracy being what it is, it was nearly a week before the young man and I were summoned to Guidance, to Discuss The Matter. After some meaningless blather about school rules and how the counselor would have to Call His Parents If It Happened Again So Don't You Dare, she opened her mouth to issue her final pronouncement.

"Here it comes," I thought. "Detention, at least. Something. Humiliate him in equal measure, do anything."

"C___," she told him, "If you have such a need to touch ladies' underwear, buy yourself a bra and keep it in your pocket."

I'm sure she thought she was being witty. I don't remember leaving the office -- I was literally seeing red. After that public humiliation, she had done nothing. What was the point of reporting these things if nothing was done?

I wish I could say I learned to knee guys in the crotch, or that I took self defense lessons. But the real ending of the story is that when my 10 year high school reunion notice came in the mail a few months ago, I tore it up. Into very tiny shreds.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

(he could never grasp the fact that I went by Peg, not Margaret)

I can't recall anything right now (though I know there MUST be something to recall), but this part of your post reminded me of something that happened to my cousin:

For one year, my cousin attended a Catholic school. She was 10 or so. The nun (this was in the days when there were nuns) in charge of her class insisted on calling her "Margaret." She called her "Margaret" on the first day of class, and "Margaret" on the last day of class, despite corrections by my cousin, who in those days went by "Peggy", and her parents.

My cousin's full given name is "Pegeen."

She was glad to go to public school where the teacher, at least, would believe her when she saw the real name on the class roll.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is how scottjames's parents found out that he needed glasses: his third grade teacher kept insisting on calling him Jim. And he kept telling her his name was Scott, and she kept assuming he was just trying to be a macho miniature manly-man, and she wasn't standing for that. So when his folks went to parent-teacher conferences they got it sorted out, and they asked Scott when they got home, "When you saw your name written in the wrong order up on the wall, why didn't you correct her?" And he said, "There are names up on the wall?" And off they went to get him glasses.

One of the nice things about being a Marissa is that people didn't have a standard nickname for it. Melissas all got stuck being "Missy" when we were little, but nobody assumed any nickname of me, so Mris/Mrissa is all my own.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I had a teacher who insisted I didn't know how to spell my first name (which is a variant of a, no longer, common name).

She told me, after I'd written it out, that I was wrong, my name wasn't 'x' it was really 'y'.

I apparently came home in tears (shame, frustration, I don't recall).

She got an earful from my mother.

There were a couple of more incidents in the course of the year. I learned a lot, she, not so much.

TK

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

My first grade teacher was convinced all year that one of our Brians was actually Bryon. I have no idea why, nor why it never got corrected.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Boys don't like girls who argue with them." Hah. I would say that this is the advantage of dating men instead of boys, but my own personal counterexamples started when I was...um...3 years old, I think. So I just knew that was stupid. (Also, Dad clearly liked Mom, and Grandpa clearly liked Grandma, and Uncle Rudy clearly liked Aunt Doris, and Uncle Phil liked Aunt Ellen and...so teachers who said that were just wrong.)

But also, "He's only mean to you because he likes you." No, that particular "he" was only mean to me because he was a vicious little sadist who was permitted to be mean to anyone he pleased. The boys who "liked" me at that age gave me squashed dandelions and invited me to have rollerskating races with them.

"You're going to have to take an interest in football if you want to have friends." I left Nebraska. Problem solved. (But even before I left Nebraska, I had plenty of friends, some of whom liked football and some of whom did not but none of whom required it of me.)

"She's not going to learn to stick up for herself if you always fight her battles for her." No, the immigrant kid is not going to learn to stick up for herself if you teach her that the other (white!) girls are allowed to gang up against her but no one is allowed to gang up for her. What she'll learn is to hide and to placate bullies and to be ashamed of her ethnicity. Hell with that.

[trogon.livejournal.com]

This was third grade, give or take a year. I was a little astronomy nerd even then, and had read all about Voyager 2's Saturn visit in the children's astronomy magazines. We had the unit on The Solar System in science class, full of material that was either suddenly out of date or just plain wrong -- I distinctly remember the book claiming that Mercury was the hottest planet. Worse, a question about the relative temperature of the planets was on the test! Oh, the dilemma. I ended up choosing the answer that I knew would be marked as correct, but writing in "lie" next to it in teeny tiny writing to assuage my conscience.

Mercury

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

I find this intriguing. I haven't gone out of my way to read (or to avoid) astronomy and its updated over the 40 years since I graduated from high school, but I'd picked up on *some of* the new things. I know that Larry Niven's first published story, "The Coldest Place," argued that Mercury's dark side was the coldest place in the solar system. This definitely has turned out to be wrong. So is it now believed that Venus is a lot hotter than Mercury? Is part of the issue that, since Mercury rotates after all, that no given part of it gets as hot as we all used to think it got? I really do want to know, and to read your source material. Thanks.

Nate B.

Re: Mercury

[trogon.livejournal.com]

Um, it's common knowledge, I'm afraid, so a "source material" would be "anything on the solar system written in the last thirty years." Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect -- the temperature of Mercury is close to what a simple calculation involving its distance from the sun and its albedo would give you, while that of Venus is hundreds of degrees hotter.

[http://users.livejournal.com/anam_cara_/]

My maternal grandmother used to admonish me for "speaking ill" of either some one that was dead or just an older family member (i.e. when I'd refer to my paternal grandfather being an alcoholic, which was common knowledge and just the way it was). It made me mad that speaking frank facts, even though they were negative facts, wasn't allowed, that death or authority somehow erased them, and if someone died, everything was automatically forgiven and forgotten and never mentioned again (and sure, petty things, but I'm talking about pretty substantial things that affected other people's lives).

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Ironically, I've forgotten the specific fact.

My 12th-grade government teacher made a statement that I *knew* was wrong. We had a vigorous debate in his class, at the end of which it was clear that I hadn't persuaded him. The question showed up on the test. I dutifully filled in the answer that I knew the teacher wanted. I, and everybody else who gave that answer, was counted incorrect. Argh.

And, no, this isn't a Mr. Chips story about the heroic teacher; the guy was a jerk.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

When my mom had to go back to work after my dad died, I was daycared by a Catholic family up the street. Their dad was adamant that the world was created some 6,000 years ago. I may have been just a little kid, but I was a little kid with a keen interest in paleontology*, and I knew better. But there was no arguing with him.

*Don't all little kids have a keen interest in paleontology? Apparently not - none of the kids in this Catholic family did.**

**I'm not Catholic-bashing. I'm saying what happened.

[leiabelle.livejournal.com]

That's bizarre, considering that the Catholic Church has supported the Big Bang theory since the 1950s. Then again, it's not like most people are aware of every teaching that their particular brand of religion supports, though they ought to be. -_-

(Also not Catholic-bashing. Am Catholic myself and know very few Catholics who believe in creationism or the "Earth is 6000 years old" thing, so your story makes me facepalm on behalf of most Catholics.)

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

Hmm! This would have been back in the very late 60's, so maybe he was just really Old Skool. When the kids went to catechism, I was sent to the church basement to be Glared At By Nuns. Man, nobody glares like a nun.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Don't all little kids have a keen interest in paleontology?

Mine did when they were little, and still do now they're teenagers.

[stinaleigh.livejournal.com]

My high school biology teacher, when teaching about genetics, said quite emphatically when asked that a dark haired, dark eyed, dark skinned man and a blonde, blue eyed woman would not have 3 blond haired, blue eyed children.

He hadn't met my parents at that point, but I just boggled as I and my brothers are fair (my middle brother is the darkest of us and his hair is still dark blond and his eyes hazel, my youngest brother has the most beautiful pale blue eyes, straight from my maternal grandfather). My father's background is Native American and French Canadian and my mother is purely Scandinavian (1/2 Norwegian, 1/4 Swede, 1/4 Dane).

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I've got lots, but the top number one candidate has to be "Children don't get headaches".

This turns out not to be the case.

[http://users.livejournal.com/anam_cara_/]

One more... last year my son was frequently pulled out of class periods for their school's talented and gifted program. One day the pull-out time came during a science test. Confused about what to do, he went to the TAG teacher who told him to returned to the classroom, take the test, and just come back if he had time and just have free work time on his current project. The TAG teacher told him to tell the other student in his class (who stayed in the classroom) that he didn't have to come in after the test, unless he had work left on his project.

My son returns, takes the test, and then waits until the other student is turning in his test, approaches him near the teacher's desk and relays the message. The science teacher then reminds them that there is NO TALKING during tests, and proceeds to give them both zeros on the test. This was enough to drop my son an entire letter grade and miss out on the 'A' honor roll, a goal that he had been putting a concerted effort in. His test was corrected anyway, he only missed 2 points, and then it was slashed in red with a big zero acrossed it.

I asked the principal for a meeting between him and the science teacher, to try to clear up the situation. The teacher was firm though, a rule is a rule is a rule and if you make even one exception, even an exception that makes sense, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to enforce the rule for anyone, ever again. This rationale I thought was quite ridiculous, especially at a middle school level, where the kids can readily understand the purpose of a particular rule, rather than just blindly viewing things in black and white. Overall he had conflicting directives by two authority figures, and handled the situation as appropriately as he could, and was clearly not cheating, nor creating a distraction to the other students.

Anyway, we compromised by her allowing my son to do an extra science project and paper to make up the points to retain his grade, but when I approached my son, he refused, in part because he felt it was still unfair, and for the most part he never wanted to deal with the teacher again, he ducked low the rest of the school year, just handing in his work and sliding by.

'Knew was wrong"

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

The first two of these involve women in my parents' age group who lived in our little village of Manzanita, Washington -- year-round population 6, summer and sometimes weekend population 20 to 30. (My greater community was Vashon Island, Washington; my post office was Dockton. Manzanita was just a big bunch of summer homes up against the salt water; the local general store had closed in 1949.) Manzanita was in many ways the kind of village that altogether raise children. I was about 11 when Coralee, one of the summer people, told me that all languages spoken in Europe were descended from Latin, and if I was not aware of this incontrovertible fact, it was because I was only 11 and couldn't possibly be aware of such things. My father was a linguist, and I'd read numerous books of his. The Germanic languages were not descended from Latin, nor were the Slavic ones, nor was modern Greek; and then there are languages like Finnish and Hungarian, that aren't even "cousin" languages of the Indo-European ones. But being 11 years old, I could not convince Coralee.

Later, another summer woman, Aileen McLaughlin, tried to tell me over and over again that a true Manx cat has no tail at all. First of all, all that I had said was that a kitten we had, who had been born with an extremely truncated tail and long rabbit-like hind legs, showed some distinct characteristics of being part Manx. I did not say, "We can show this cat at a cat show as a Manx and it will win." However, 43 years later and having read even more about cats, I *know* that a cat can be of purely Manx derivation and still have somewhat of a tail, or in some cases a full tail; you can't show it at a cat show as Manx, but the genetics really does make this possible, and one writer says that a Manx *has* to have some out-crossing to be tailless. I can't for the life of me figure out how this would work, but again, it's an authority saying this, not I.

Later on, when I first got into high school, an English teacher, Mr. Beattie, was talking to the class about words that are commonly misspelled. He said, "'Occasion' is an example of this. A lot of ignorant people spell it 'o-c-c-a-s-i-o-n,'along with numerous other misspellings; but if you want to get it right, it's 'o-c-c-a-i-s-i-o-n.'"
One Rod McCallum, who sat next to me, let me borrow his dictionary and I corrected him. I do not recall Mr. Beattie's reaction. However, later on, Mr. Beattie was saying that all nouns can be fitted into four categories: Common, proper, abstract, and concrete. I tried to explain that "abstract" and "concrete" were actually divisions of "common." He completely blew up at me and told me that he had the authority to tell the class what the truth was about such matters, that I was completely incompetent to discuss the subject, and I should quit pretending I knew what I was talking about. I was kicked up one grade at the end of the semester, and never had to deal with Mr. Beattie again. Sometime after that, he got a job at a different school as a principal. I was very frightened for the kids he would be overseeing! (Note: Other kids I was in school with talked to me about what a wonderful teacher Mr. Beattie was. I tried to point out that he didn't know his subject. I got nowhere.)

Nate B.

[awallens.livejournal.com]

when I was in junior high, my English teacher said "It's impossible for you as junior high students to understand Shakespeare". Never mind that my friends and I had just read the play we were discussing in class and liked and understood it. When she said something wrong and I corrected her, she told me to shut up and not speak during class again, unless I could add something relevant to the situation. This is also the woman who loved to use big words on her exam and frequently used them in the wrong context. But we were not allowed to clarify anything on exams, not allowed to ask questions, so I frequently got much lower grades than I should have.
there was also the guidance counselor my senior year of high school that said the college would be to hard for me being a blind person, and refused to sign my college letters of recommendation. My dad has made copies of my two degrees and sent them to him. Dad wanted to frame them, I told him that might be going a wee bit overboard.

[deganwyjones.livejournal.com]

Whistling girls and crowing hens
Always come to bad ends.
~a bit of advice from my great-grandmother

My mother had trouble with the name thing. She's Beth. Just Beth. And all of her teachers couldn't for the life of them figure out that she WASN"T Elizabeth.

My story happened in sixth grade. My teacher was convinced that Hercules and Heracles were not the same person. I picked up my book and pointed out the first line of the article on Hercules that said "Hercules, also known as Heracles..." She gave me a pack of skittles.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Whistling girls and crowing hens
Always come to bad ends.

That's right! I just remembered! He actually quoted that bit proverb to me!

I still don't believe it.

[nickel234.livejournal.com]

My name is Becky. Not Rebecca. Just Becky.

Teachers and people from all over cannot get it.

It's very frustrating when you turn in a document that says "Please state your full LEGAL name" and they look at it and question your literacy and intelligence.

[vass]

Tell me about a time a teacher or a parent or someone else in authority told you something that you knew immediately was wrong.

Oh dear. You asked. I've had a bee in my bonnet about this for the last eighteen years!

It was grade three. We were studying units of measurement (metric, because this is Australia.) We'd done kilometres, and now we were on to kilograms. A penny dropped in my head. A thousand metres, a thousand grams...
"Miss B_, does 'kilo' mean a thousand?"
And with the most patronising tone imaginable, she replied "No, Ellie, *kilo* is short for a *kilogram*."

[vass]

Another one:
This one in year nine, by which time I was fourteen, so old enough not to think teachers were automatically right. First year at a new high school, first day, core music class (we had elective music as well, but the school made a big deal of being a 'designated music school', so everyone had to do it - not always a good use of the students' time, musician or not.)

Miss C_: Now, a MAJOR chord is a HAPPY chord, and a MINOR chord is a SAD chord.
Me: No, they just have different scale patterns. Minor melodies are frequently associated with sad music, but Bartok, for instance, has written some very happy music in minor keys. And the saddest aria I can think of, 'Che Faro Senza Euridice', by Gluck, is in a major key.

After Miss C_ went out of the room, another student turns to me, shocked and appalled: Elena, you can't say that! She's the teacher, I'd *think* she knows better than *you*!"

Part of the problem being that I wasn't questioning Miss C's knowledge - I'm sure she didn't think minor means sad and major means happy... at least, I hope she didn't. She was just oversimplifying to the point where what she's saying is *wrong*.

[snippy]

Meh. In 5th grade we had a substitute, who was reading us a story in the library. It was about a mule, and she asked whether anyone knew what a mule was. I raised my hand and said it was the sterile offspring of a horse and a donkey.

Got sent to the principal's office, because she insisted that no, mule was just another word for donkey. Even after I showed her the dictionary entry (we were in the *library*, after all).

[raasalhayya.livejournal.com]

When I was quite small, I had a very old babysitter who was some strange version of Christian. She was convinced that "the world is square because in the Bible it says that the angels stand at the four corners of the Earth!" She would become livid if anyone argued with her about it. I quickly learned to not contradict her on this subject and decided to avoid a beating by not asking her if the Earth could be a rectangle.

[siriologist.livejournal.com]

In graduate school I had a test in which I answered that something affected something else areally, meaning across a wide area. My professor took ppoints off because he thought I meant aerially, meaning looking at a wide expance of ground from the air. After I got the test back I took the paper and a dictionary into him and he gave me the credit. Seems he'd never heard of the word areally, and always used aerially instead. I felt so smart that day. :)

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

There were no kids qualifying for advanced placement at Live Oak Middle School, I was one of them that should. I had gotten bumped up one grade in primary and the "PTB" thought I would have maladjustments if bumped up again. In Mrs Morgan's math class I'd read the book already in the 1st week and was bored. I hid a SF or some other novel in my math book and would read that instead. I guess she noticed because I was called up to the board to solve a prob in advanced algebra, I did it correctly and explained what I was doing as was her SOP. The prob was supposed to be end of the year, not middle of the 1st month. I got suspended for wasting her time. Still mad about that unfairness.

[aelfsciene.livejournal.com]

Somewhere with the SAD and the depression, I lost my tendency to whistle. It's reappeared over the last few days, and I've been surprised all over again at how confused and startled people seem to be when you whistle. It's a happy, good thing, and fie on your old teacher and anyone else who thinks otherwise.

[naomikritzer]

In first grade, we were learning shapes. The teacher informed us that a square was a rectangle, but a rectangle was NOT a square.

Now, it is absolutely true that a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square. But I insisted that if a square was a rectangle, then some rectangles were obviously squares because, dude, look, THERE'S A SQUARE RIGHT THERE AND IT'S A RECTANGLE SO THAT RECTANGLE IS A SQUARE.

My dim recollection is that I simply insisted over and over again that if a square was a rectangle, then rectangles must sometimes be squares, while the teacher patiently (because I went to a liberal school) explained to me repeatedly that I was wrong.

Sigh. Some of these stories are making my blood pressure go up, because now I imagine dealing with them as a parent. School was hard enough as a kid; dealing with it as a parent is 10 times worse.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

High school college bowl, competition between the 11th and 12th grade teams. Winner would go compete against another school who had challenged us. I was captain of the 11th grade team.

The question was, "Who was the first woman to swim across the English Channel?" I answered "Gertrude Ederle." They said, "Wrong, Florence Chadwick. The 12th grade team wins!"

I brought in the People's Almanac to prove that it actually was Ederle. They said, "Oh, well you're right. Tell you what, though, let the 12th grade have it because they're graduating and your team can compete against Washington High next year." Which isn't entirely unreasonable, but next year no one challenged us to college bowl and we never got to compete. (Why we couldn't have challenged someone ourselves, I have no idea.)

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

When N was in third grade they learnt the province capitals, and the teacher told them that Amsterdam was the capital of Noord-Holland. Now Amsterdam is the capital of the country, and it's actually in Noord-Holland, but the capital of Noord-Holland is Haarlem, where N was born. So she knew; and she told the teacher; and the teacher didn't believe her.

I went to the school to talk to the teacher, and the teacher didn't believe me at first, until I showed her the Haarlem city guide.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I've been dealing with a lot of patronization this year -- I'm 24, just out of college, and hired into the college I used to go to as an assistant for a music festival, and no one can remember I'm 1.) not a student anymore and 2.) not stupid in the first place. Oh well.

One situation a little like that that went properly was when a kid sitting in front of me in European History class made one of the most ridiculously sexist comments I'd ever heard and I hit him over the head with my book. Luckily the teacher was understanding and offered me a larger book to hit the kid again. The kid wasn't in authority, but he felt he was an authority on everything. I wish I remembered the comment, because the story would be funnier.

And I whistle whenever I darn well please.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I feel so, so lucky to have been born in 1982 and mostly raised in progressive areas-- although that's no guarantee of being spared this kind of stupidity--but I've never had to deal with this sort of thing where social rules are concerned, just with facts.

I moved to France when I was six; one of my teachers insisted that butterflies lived a day or two at most. I knew very well that this wasn't true--I knew about Monarch butterflies--and I argued the point, but I didn't have any books to back me up so I had to let it go in the end.

(True story: I wrote this comment while working the circ desk of my library, and while I was writing it, I checked out a copy of _The Wild Swans_!)

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

"If you ignore them (the bullies and teasers), they will get bored and go away."

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

My mother told me that guys would never like me if I didn't DO something with my hair. (She meant cut it shorter and get it curled in some fashion.) Funny how every male I've ever discussed it with has said he preferred my hair long and left loose. Besides that, I already knew at that point that attracting boys wasn't the main reason to make choices about what to do with my body.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

First... birds do have belly buttons.

They have a very small scar where the last bits of yolk are absorbed (reptiles too, snakes actually have to be hatched in containers with a loose substrate, or the unabsorbed yolk can adhere, and they'll eviscerate themselves, but I digress).

Second. College. History of Western Civ II. The guy was a moron. Forget, if you can, the boring lectures, he rarely got through an hour without an untrue fact (some of which contravened the text).

Somewhere in the 3-5 week range (just before the drop deadline) he started to talk about the storming of the Bastille. He mentioned all the guards who were killed and the hundred of prisoners freed.

I stood up, with some comment of disgust, and walked to the offices, where I dropped the class.

TK