I remember once that I did. I was in the 6th grade, and we had 20 'spelling words' from the book each week, and we always had the assignment of using those words in sentences. One week, during a time in which I was being rebellious against the teacher, school, parents, and just about everything, I got the idea of making that weekly assignment easy by numbering the paper 1 to 20 and taking each word capitalized, each sentence was "___ is a word." That follows the "exact words" argument, like Greg in that episode, but the teacher made me do the assignment over and have the first paper signed by my parents. So it doesn't always pay to try to use that kind of argument.

My son had to do that in school too and he hated it. Its a wonder he didn't do like you did, but I guess it didn't occur to him. lol!

I remember once that I did. I was in the 6th grade, and we had 20 'spelling words' from the book each week, and we always had the assignment of using those words in sentences. One week, during a time in which I was being rebellious against the teacher, school, parents, and just about everything, I got the idea of making that weekly assignment easy by numbering the paper 1 to 20 and taking each word capitalized, each sentence was "___ is a word." That follows the "exact words" argument, like Greg in that episode, but the teacher made me do the assignment over and have the first paper signed by my parents. So it doesn't always pay to try to use that kind of argument.

That's pretty good! I'll bet the teacher had a chuckle when he/she saw your sentences!

During my freshman year in high school, we had a unit on computer programing (in BASIC) in my math class (geometry)...

The teacher wanted us to write a program to figure out the cost of "x number of " apples at .20 apiece, "x number of oranges at .18 apiece", etc... but the way the question was worded was simply: "Find the cost of ... <list of items>"

The question never told us to write a program to figure it out... so I merely calculated the cost of the items listed, and turned in that total figure as my answer.

After I got the test back, the teacher's comment was "Write a PROGRAM to do this!!!" I told her that she never said for us to do that in the question, she just told us to find the total cost, which I did, correctly.

She thought it was funny, but I lost the argument, and got the question wrong.

She was one hot teacher, though!

I tried that and let me put it like this the reaction I got was not the same as Greg's reaction from Mike and Carol. I'll let you read between the lines.

I tried that and let me put it like this the reaction I got was not the same as Greg's reaction from Mike and Carol. I'll let you read between the lines.

By "I tried that" do you mean that you did the same thing as Greg (i.e. drive "a" car, rather than a family car)?

I tried something similar to the sentence thing a time or two (with only a word or two, not the entire assignment)--don't remember if I got by with it or not.

The Bradys tried it again in another episode--Fright Night--when they decided to scare Alice. "Mom and Dad said not to scare each other; they didn't say anything about Alice." (I can't remember their exact words. :) )

That's pretty good! I'll bet the teacher had a chuckle when he/she saw your sentences!

She might have when she first saw it, and no one would have known what she was chuckling about. But she really kept it from me if she did. At the top of the paper, in that famous red ink used in grading, she wrote "Did you think this was funny?" I must have thought I was in enough trouble that I didn't write under it "Yeah-- didn't you?" I don't even remember what my parents thought when they saw it and had to sign it and return it.

By "I tried that" do you mean that you did the same thing as Greg (i.e. drive "a" car, rather than a family car)?
Sure did and with an attitude about it. Again, as I stated, the reaction I got was not the same that Greg received from Mike and Carol. It was nipped immediately and I did not do it twice.

Dad on Friday: "Now remember, because of your math grade, you are not to use the car for the whole weekend."

Dad on Saturday evening after midnight, meeting me as I arrived home late: "Son, what did I tell you about using the car this weekend?"

Me: "You said '*Now* remember...'. Well, it's a way past then and I don't remember it anymore. You're flawed rule, not mine."

But my dad had removed his belt by the time I finished my sentence. He agreed that that he had should have used a different punishment in the first place, and proceeded to use that punishment at that moment. I wasn't able to sit down without pain for over a week, which meant I had no desire to use the car anyways, lasting though the week into the next weekend.

My dad never laid a hand on me. Never spanked me, never slapped me, nothing. He could sure knew how to verbally wreck me, though.

Mom, otoh, used to swat the back of my legs with a wire hanger. Ooh, that hurt!

I don't have kids yet, but when I do, I don't think it'd be too bad to spank occassionally, but I certainly wouldn't use anything but my hand.

I remember once that I did. I was in the 6th grade, and we had 20 'spelling words' from the book each week, and we always had the assignment of using those words in sentences. One week, during a time in which I was being rebellious against the teacher, school, parents, and just about everything, I got the idea of making that weekly assignment easy by numbering the paper 1 to 20 and taking each word capitalized, each sentence was "___ is a word." That follows the "exact words" argument, like Greg in that episode, but the teacher made me do the assignment over and have the first paper signed by my parents. So it doesn't always pay to try to use that kind of argument.


In sixth grade I wrote "Some adverbs were eating sandwiches while being witnesses to crashes." She just said to use them in a sentence, she didn't say the sentence had to make sense! She didn't buy it though...

My dad never laid a hand on me. Never spanked me, never slapped me, nothing. He could sure knew how to verbally wreck me, though.

Mom, otoh, used to swat the back of my legs with a wire hanger. Ooh, that hurt!

I don't have kids yet, but when I do, I don't think it'd be too bad to spank occassionally, but I certainly wouldn't use anything but my hand.

Maybe, but I wouldn't recommend doing something like making them cut their own "switch" from a tree, that's something you do to someone you hate!

During my freshman year in high school, we had a unit on computer programing (in BASIC) in my math class (geometry)...

The teacher wanted us to write a program to figure out the cost of "x number of " apples at .20 apiece, "x number of oranges at .18 apiece", etc... but the way the question was worded was simply: "Find the cost of ... <list of items>"

The question never told us to write a program to figure it out... so I merely calculated the cost of the items listed, and turned in that total figure as my answer.

After I got the test back, the teacher's comment was "Write a PROGRAM to do this!!!" I told her that she never said for us to do that in the question, she just told us to find the total cost, which I did, correctly.

She thought it was funny, but I lost the argument, and got the question wrong.

She was one hot teacher, though!


I had a teacher who was teaching a BASIC programming class. She introduced a number of concepts including the print using command and the bubble sort. She then gave us a problem to solve. Take a short list of people and sort it by the month they were born and print out the results.

Of course, I simply read the data into an array with one dimension being the month they were born (numerically) and printed out the array, skipping the empty cells. The result was a properly sorted list.

The teacher told me that I was supposed to do a bubble sort, I pointed out that she didn't say to use a bubble sort, and why would I waste time teaching a computer to do something it already knew how to do?

She didn't make me redo it, but I was kind of insulted that she just assumed that I would be stupid enough to use a bubble sort for a problem like that when I didn't have to. After all, my program was 1/3 as long and ran 10 times as fast as the programs that used a bubble sort, have you ever tried doing a bubble sort in BASIC?

... have you ever tried doing a bubble sort in BASIC?

Yes, IIRC, bubble sorts are OK for short lists of data, but it ends up taking way too long for lengthy lists of data because of the mechanics involved. B-sorts basically go through a list of data, looking at each adjacent pair. If the pair is in the correct order, it moves to the next pair. If not, it flips the two items. For a lengthy list of data, this can take a lot of CPU time in BASIC

Dad on Friday: "Now remember, because of your math grade, you are not to use the car for the whole weekend."

Dad on Saturday evening after midnight, meeting me as I arrived home late: "Son, what did I tell you about using the car this weekend?"

Me: "You said '*Now* remember...'. Well, it's a way past then and I don't remember it anymore. You're flawed rule, not mine."

But my dad had removed his belt by the time I finished my sentence. He agreed that that he had should have used a different punishment in the first place, and proceeded to use that punishment at that moment. I wasn't able to sit down without pain for over a week, which meant I had no desire to use the car anyways, lasting though the week into the next weekend.


I am going to have to agree with your father on his reaction to this situation!