A Gentleman Never Starts Rumors

My AP History course junior year was unbearable. My teacher was insistent on testing us on every single chapter individually. This meant that we were taking a 50-100 question test every week in order to cover Columbus to Clinton in a year. This was a 3 semester "college course" crammed into a high school year. I once suggested that she break the course into units. She replied that the tests that came with the book went by chapters. The fact that she admitted to not even making the questions herself led me to just drop it.

In retrospect it was taking a 100-question multiple choice test every week that made me so good at test-taking. By the 20th test you could see how the book and test makers interacted and could basically scan the chapters and know the answers. This led to a lot of easy tests and free time after I was done taking the test. So I decided to start a rumor. I didn't want there to be any social damage done, but needed something that would spread like wildfire. The answer was staring me in the face: SCANTRON. I came up with the rumor that if you rubbed a line of Chapstick over the dashes that ran lengthwise on the page the machine would reset and grade it a perfect score. I claimed by uncle worked for Scantron Inc and that was the way that they reset the machines.

This practice did spread like wildfire. When I saw people spreading a line of Chapstick on their gym tests I started to get nervous. Perhaps I was negatively affecting my classmates grades (I don't know why they believed me). Perhaps I was doing something illegal (I don't know what). Perhaps I would get caught (I don't know what for).

This all came to a head when we had to start taking multiple choice tests on non-Scantron answer sheets. I learned later in the year that the machine was broken. I don't know if it was simply from lazy teachers abusing the machine, but I like to think there was a petroleum-based buildup that led to that machine's demise.