Aaron Takes A Final
by Aaron Greenspan

Before

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Mr. Flaumbrghghhhgh, the head proctor for this examination in... in... Lit and Art C. That does not matter. There are so many Final Exams that it is impossible to tell the difference between them all, is it not? All I know is that they all charge incredible rates for their meager services, usually without food or beverage these days, and then they damage your luggage! It is such a shame that I began working for one such Final Exam in 1873.

Will you please remove all your notes from your desks, as the exam is about to begin. Immediately. Your pilot today will be Captain Rabun Taylor. Do not attempt to pronounce his name, not even in your head. No one must know the correct pronunciation. It is classified! Thought police will be patrolling the room to ensure that you do not violate this regulation. Offenders will be tarred and feathered on the spot. We will have a flight time today of approximately three hours, zero minutes, and zero seconds. Approximately. I will keep the official time in the cockpit, but it will undoubtedly be wrong.

Please turn off all cell phones, pagers, small vibrating electronic devices, calculators, radios, laptop computers, digital cameras, walkmans, walkmen, clocks, and cool Boston pencil sharpeners with the little translucent caps—as they may interfere with the navigation instruments in the cockpit. In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, small yellow oxygen masks will magically unfurl before your very eyes, while you try, asphyxiated though you may be, to mark the correct answer on your test form. Since these oxygen masks will be magically suspended in mid-air, however, they will not provide you with any so-called "oxygen." You will have to rely on peer pressure and pressure from your parents to make up for the loss of air.

This Boeing Seven-Garbegedy-Seven testcraft is equipped with two impossible-to-access exits at the rear, and none in the front or middle, where you might expect to find them. There are lavatories located outside of the aircraft in a region known as "somewhere else." Only one male and one female may use the lavatory at a time. It is against FAA, FCC, FTC, FDA, USDA, CIA, FBI, NSA, and probably other regulations to tamper with or disable smoke detectors in the lavatories. You may not smoke on this non-smoking flight. It would, however, be interesting to see what would happen if you set the smoke detector itself on fire, thereby releasing smoke into the cabin, with no detector to detect it.

Should you have any questions during the exam, just raise your hand. A test attendant will come and snap at you in an irritating, shrill voice shortly thereafter for disturbing the delicate thought processes of the hundreds of other students who are trying to take the test. Your score may be disqualified and your test ripped to shreds, because asking questions is considered cheating in thirty-seven states, including Alabama. Once your test is floating in small pieces in the air, it will be sucked up with a Hoover vacuum cleaner and transported immediately via armored truck to the Harvard Void.

With Twenty-Five Minutes Left

After

Put your pencils down, or we will kill you with the rusty rake that we store in the back room named Teddy. Continuing to mark your exam following this announcement constitutes cheating, and Harvard board members never, ever cheat. Never ever. Not even the ones intimiately associated with that beacon of light that most people call ENRON.

We know you have many choices when deciding whether or not to take your Final Examsš, so thank you for flying with Harvard University. We hope to serve you again soon. The local time is now three hours later than it really should be.