RyanHarne.com

There is one memory I have from the dark ages of high school that returns to me and continually brings about a laugh. Somehow, this memory seems to return without warning, and I chuckle to myself at inopportune times. It would be horrible if I ever forgot it, so to preserve the humor for my future and more forgetful self, I will scribe it here.

I took Advanced Placement Government in my senior year. Great class, great teacher, great student assortment. Of the accelerated classes I took in high school, AP Gov was likely the most intellectual since it allowed no leniency for a slack student. Plus, we had conversations during class. Our teacher was famed for being able to lose her train of thought, so we all tried diligently to bring up tangent topics just to sit back for a few minutes. You know, like modern jazz musicians, the socio-economic effects of the Volkswagen vans in the 1970s, and Virginia Department of Education woes.

Even though sometimes able to lose track of topic, our teacher was fantastic and persistent for our gradual education. Following a test, we would be quickly given the correct multiple choice answers, individually look through our answers and find our foolhardy mistakes. Indeed, it was a helpful measure of learning through error - a repetitive reinforcement. Questions that were deemed too confusing or ambiguous could be challenged by the class, and a few, lucky instances of begrudging surrender were granted us by the teacher in the form of a half-point or so.

During one such check, while studying Asian governments, a student challenged a fill-in-the-blank answer that he provided. To a question asking the name of the current Chinese president (dictator, etc.), he answered “Kaishek”. While this is partially correct (the president’s name is Chiang Kaishek), he received no credit. As our teacher reiterated to this forgetful student, in traditional Chinese culture, the “first” name comes last, and the “last” first. So, in effect, I would be Harne Ryan. Thus, the student put down a very common first name of Chinese citizens, “Kaishek”, and specified no last name (as he thought he was doing). The student’s response to our teacher’s rebuttal was priceless:

“Well, we’re on a first name basis.” Years after hearing this, I still cannot stifle laughter. Such a quickly spat response and the image of a JF student being pen pals with a communist dictator, wow, that’s comedy.

To compound my recollection of this humor, today I saw a fantastic license plate that will forever be available to the public’s watchful eye on the internet.

THUGNMA.

Is today a good Tuesday, or what?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 at 9:14 pm and is filed under , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.