Students win 'pullet surprises' for bloopers

          "Looking at Language"
           by Richard Lederer

[I found this hanging on the wall of the Writing Program offices at MIT.  The
xerox has no date and no publication, but I assume it's from the Boston
Globe.  The Writing Program folks added a note, "Let us help you not add to
this!"]

One of the fringe benefits of being an English teacher is receiving the
occasional jewel of a student blooper in a composition.

The original student blunder probably dates back to the day that some poor
pupil first touched quill pen to parchment.

Ever since, student have shown a remarkable facility for confusing words that
possess similar sounds but entirely different meanings or giving a droll
twist to the simplest of facts.

The results range from the pathetic to the hilarious to the unintentionally
insightful.  For example, a student once wrote, "Having only one wife is
called monotony," while another wrote, "When a man has more than one wife he
is a pigamist."

From my own cullings and from the collections of other teachers, I offer my
favorite student howlers, each a certifiably pure gem of fractured English:

In 1957, Eugene O'Neill won a Pullet Surprise.

The bowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w and y.

Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

The death of Francis Macomber was a turning point in his life.

A virgin forest is a place where the hand of man has never set foot.

Rural life is found mostly in the country.

In Act II, Hamlet is left on stage to relieve himself in his longest
soliloquy.

A horse divided against itself cannot stand.

The President of the United States, in having foreign affairs, has to have
the consent of the Senate.

The difference between a king and a president is that a king is the son of
his father, but a president isn't.

It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the
Father of the Renaissance.

Geometry teaches us to bisex angels.

If one angle of a triangle is more than 90 degrees the triangle is obscene.

Arabs wear turbines on their heads.

To collect sulphur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube.

In many states, murderers are put to death by electrolysis.

Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee.

The Gorgons had long snakes in their hair.  They looked like women only more
horrible.

During the years 1933-1938, there were domestic problems at home as well as
abroad.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel.

The family group consisted of three adults and six adultresses.

Richard III became a userer when he took the throne from Edward IV.

Growing on the lattice work were pink and yellow concubines.

Necessity is the mother of convention.

Zanzibar is noted for its monkeys.  The British Governor lives there.

Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the king by attacking his
manhood.

This book belongs in the anals of English literature.

Defoe wrote simply and sometimes crudly.

Shakespeare wrote tragedies, comedies, and errors.

Poe was kicked out of West Point for gamboling.

Chaucer was a great English poet who wrote many poems and verses and
sometimes wrote literature.

Whitman wrote much illiteration and compacked verse.  He often wrote long and
rumbling lines.

Floods from the Mississippi may be prevented by putting big dames in the
river.

A passive verb is when the subject is the sufferer, as "I am loved."

Unleavened bread is made without any ingredients.

They (the Puritans) thought every event significant since it was a massage
from God.

In "The Glass Menagerie," Laura's leg keeps coming between her and other
people.

In Baalbek the Romans left many huge erections.

Saving the best for last, I now unveil my all time favorite, true life
classroom boner.
In my freshman English class at Haverford College, a fellow scholar wrote in
his composition:  "The girl tumbled down the stairs and lay prostitute at the
bottom."

In the margin of the student's paper the professor commented:  "My dear sir,
you must learn to distinguish between a fallen woman and one who has merely
slipped!"
