PONE

A lovely little anecdote for you readers.

My class is currently reading Steinbeck's masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. It is by far my favorite book this year. Definitely trumps The Great Gatsby. Ooh, I've got a story about that, too. *digression alert*

So the first book my class had to read this year was Gatsby. Sweet chirruping canaries, I am either a complete barbarian or an erudite literary scholar whose aesthetics far transcend those of standard state-mandated schooling (which doesn't say much, I realize). But I really thought the book was too simply written with too much to read into. I wrote my essay and believed I was done with it forever.

Sadly, it was not meant to be.

While I was watching another Quiz Kids match on TV, Brad asked, "Though Gatsby pursues Daisy, he does not marry her. What is the name of the man who does?" (or something along those lines. In no way is that quote reliable enough to be used in lawsuits or the like). As if that were not enough. During the Stanford Junior Cardinal Classic tournament, our team got a bonus on--you got it, Gatsby. And we only got 20/30 points. Bah humbug.

Oh ho, but that is not it. Even Gaston Caperton snuck up on me with this one. When I took the SAT, one of the questions in the writing section was a sentence about The Great Gatsby. I just about barfed.

Oh yes, back to literature I like.

My friend was puzzling over the definition of the word "pone" and asked me to enlighten her. That word is a tricky tricky one--easy to mispronounce. A classmate overheard the tail end of our conversation and asked to be in on it.

"She just wanted me to tell her what porn is."

Curse my clumsy tongue. I can't even prononce a Spanish r after three years of taking the language. Though I enjoy assignments for which I have to make a board game using 15 vocabulary words about the environment.

I suppose the story after which this is titled is actually the least entertaining bit of the whole post.

PWN.