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Explain how . . . etc.
Or, to more fully and accurately quote the test proctor for the History of the Western World first semester final: “Explain how the centralized and autocratic Carthaginian mercantile structure and its related shipping dominance affected small village pre-Roman subsistence agriculture and herding, and support with pertinent data and examples, in no more than 16 single-spaced pages.” Yikes!!
It is no wonder that gasping gape-mouthed Norbert is now envisioning the last four high school years of his life going down in searing flames. (Let alone the premonition of a degrading and unsatisfying career of overflowing slop buckets and having to inquire “Want fries with that?” looming far and away to his future horizons.)
But right now what is racing through Norb’s buzz-cut and pop-eyed cranium is, “What in the #+~$?•=%@!^* did I ever do to you, Mr. Ferdinand Feeney?!"
"Or are you just taking out on all of us the frustrations by which you are consumed each day that you must face another four score of loud, lumbering, obnoxious, hormonal, slovenly, acne-ridden, texting, foul-mouthed, preoccupied, disrespectful, ear-budded teenagers who aren’t particularly interested in the details of what went on half-way around the planet several thousand years ago in cultures that no longer even exist?!”
But soon Norbert will become becalmed by the dawning realizations that, 1) nobody really understands diddly about the Carthaginians and the pre-Romans, anyway, so I can probably fudge this one, pad it a little bit with all the right buzzwords, and likely not flunk, 2) it can’t be any more difficult than determining the second derivatives of functions I still don’t get, 3) Mom and Dad are paying me $50 for every B that I can manage to eke out, so it’s certainly worth the effort to b.s. my way through this if I can, and 4) Janie said she’d wait for me at the end of the visiting team bleachers after 5th period today, and Janie is Way, Way Hot!
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