More winners from Pullet Surprise file, or why a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing

Whatever the origin of the phrase Pullet Surprise , there is certainly no geographical limit to the innocent literary invention that it defines.

While I believe the phrase may first have been written by a schoolboy in the class of Amsel Greene, in Helena, Mont., she was not the only teacher to collect and cherish such bloopers. Juel Goldstock, who teaches English at Huntington Park High School, has been collecting Pullet Surprises for years.

“In Los Angeles,” he says, “all juniors must take con comp, which is short for Contemporary Composition, and the only thing that has saved me over the years was finding humor in their papers. I’ve been saving these since 1976.

“Most of these came from my kids’ papers; some are passed on to me from other teachers who don’t have the energy to publish their own. When I get enough to fill a page, I share them with teachers at school and on an ever-growing mailing list of teachers and administrators around Los Angeles. And relatives get them, too. I don’t like seeing anything slipping through the cracks of time without others seeing them. . . .”

Here then, before they slip through the cracks of time, a few of the gems from Mr. Goldstock’s collection:

“I spent the week in Hawai, the hom of pom trees, cocanuts and loo wows. . . .”

“They always were poor but, now, thanks to the Reagan Administration, they’re in deep puberty. . . .”

“When you put Roosevelt and Wilson side by side, you can see that they had few differences but their contrasts weren’t that similar. . . .”

“In the 1920s, there were lots of new things. There were new clothes and new cars and new music and new ways to get pregnant. . . .”

“In the eleventh grade, I had a big problem. My teacher was Mr. Goldstock and he caused my future to disappear. . . .”

“His poetry uses lots of onomatopoeiazadora. . . .”

“Even kings and queens can be sad. I know for a fact that, sometimes, Queen Elizabeth mops around the castle. . . .”

“I know where babies come from. Women produce the eggs and man produces the spam. . . .”

“Margaret Sanger was a lady that due to the invention of the car tried to prohibit birth control. . . .”

“In the Middle Ages, the Black Pledge was going around. . . .”

“Oedipus killed his real father, then married his real mother. That’s called incense. . . .”

“King John signed the Carta Blanca. . . .”

“My first year of school was first grade. I didn’t attend kidneygarden. . . .”

“Romeo and Juliet were so in love. One night they secretly exchanged vowels. . . .”

“Without an education, many people in this world would be dum. . . .”

“He was so stund, he just stud there. . . .

“Frank Furter was a Supreme Court Justice.”

“It’s hard to imagine, but someday I’ll be a mother. First, I’ll get pregnant; then, I’ll spend nine months in hard labor. . . .”

“All life is sacred. No one would want to be deprived of living against his own will. . . .”

“Cleanliness is next to Godlessness. . . .”

“I wouldn’t go to college in Boston because the work is harder in a foreign country. . . .”

“If you want to catch his attention, try wearing a sexy T-shirt and blue genes. . . .”

“He was another Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde.”

“I’m Susan. I’m a 16-year-old softmore. . . .”

“I like everybody. I don’t have any enemas. . . .”

“When two people are in love, they should share a lot of infection. . . .”

“He is a sex thimble. . . .”

“His throw had the distance but it just wasn’t long enough. . . .”

“In my spare time I like to read good writting by good writters. . . .”

“The soldiers invaded the houses and took advantage of the unprotected females by making the clean-polished floors dirty with the mud from their boots. . . .”

“Ancient history records that the Ramons conquered the Geeks. . . .”

“I would hate to kill him. That would really ruin his life. . . .”

“The best part of the cow is the pork chops. . . .”

“He died because he was very ill. . . .”

“My boyfriend is cute, nice and perverting. . . .”

“A problem driver is unpredictable and erotic. . . .”

“Suicide can really kill you. . . .”

“Everyone is a human bean. . . .”

“Although his poems are difficult to understand, I like them. They’re unscrubbable. . . .”

“It is too hot for the weather. . . .”

“In Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts,’ the son inherited a venereal disease because his father was a flounder. . . .”

“People still disagree about what started World War I. I think it began with the assassination of the Arch-Duck. . . .”

As you can see, the difficulty is not just with grammar and spelling, though of course there are pitfalls enough in the English language.

There is also a lack of maturity, a fecklessness, in dealing with the manners and morals of our society, a lack of sophistication, an innocence that even the least studious of us finally shed through wear and tear.

There is nothing exactly wrong, for example, in saying that suicide can really kill you; or that he died because he was very ill; or even that to kill him would be to ruin his life. But they are such callow discoveries, the insights of naivete, and so they delight as they dismay; and sometimes, perversely, they are full of light.

We should applaud our teachers, such as Mr. Goldstock, who must sometimes despair of ever teaching anything, but nevertheless keep trying, and keep their good humor.

After all, everyone is a human bean.