I don’t know what made me think of this, but this morning while driving to the office, I remembered something from the fifth grade. It was 1980, and every Friday, we were supposed to bring in a news story, either from a newspaper, or that we’d seen on the news, for Current Events. We had to get up in front of the class and either read or summarize our story. This was right in the middle of the Iran Hostage Crisis, so any time someone forgot to bring in a story, they would walk to the front of class and announce, “The hostages have been in Iran for 332 days,” and then take their seat. (Obviously, the number of days changed.) I went to school in Georgia, and so Iran was pronounced as eye-RAN, instead of its proper pronunciation. I remember some Current Events days, we would have five or six kids reporting on the plight of the hostages, because they all forgot to bring in a story.

The teacher really should have only allowed one person to pull this trick each week, and give the others no credit, but she didn’t.