The Horror of Leaving for Rio
A bit late, sez you, considering the rest of the nation’s students were already grappling with Keano and Heano as early as last Wednesday. Even later than that, sez I, considering I actually went through The Horror as far back as (gulp) 1976, my default expression as I turned over each new exam paper more or less the same as the look you might expect to find on a dog’s face if you showed it a card trick.
Picture me, for example, sitting the Biology exam, grappling with the life cycle of the earthworm. (How right my old colleague Liam Fay was when he once attested that he did indeed attend school but was educated elsewhere). The one thing I remember about all those wasted hours learning about the slippery critter is that it is a hermaphrodite, a fact of absolutely no consequence to anyone, surely, but a great get-out-of-jail card for harassed teachers who could tick off the ‘sexual reproduction’ box in the biology syllabus without ever having to speak to a classroom full of hormonally-charged teenage boys about actual sex between two separate creatures, never mind two consenting adults.
