Date Test: Grading (continued)

1944 - D-Day. That's right. Battle of the Bulge was in December, but I'm guessing that wasn't what the date referred to.
1836 - Alamo.
399 BC - Death of Socrates.
1564 - Another head scratcher. Bill Shakespeare born, John Calvin died. Conquistadors, maybe?
33 - DING.
1871 - Chicago Fire.
337 - Constantine dies.
1848 - DING!
323 BC - Alexander dies, Babylon partitioned.
1452 - John Talbot, I guess. Leo Davinci, Richard the Third, and James III all born this year.
1789 - DING.
1660 - John Thurloe?
1763 - Treaty of Paris.
1849 - Gold rush. That's a fumble.

So, do I pass?

Since we're not counting 1984, there's 49 dates on the test. I got 18 1/2 DINGS. %38.

Final Grade: BIG F.

Then, out of the blue, Patrick did receive some indication of where bottom was. After giving this test, he was collared by one of the female students, who urgently requested to meet with him privately. He did so the next morning, in the school library. She had a terrible personal story to relate. As the child of abusive parents, she had been moved from place to place all her life and had never attended school before being put in a foster home three years before. Since then she had been working feverishly to make up the lost time and to conceal her lack of schooling from everyone but the school administration. She was in a panic when she spoke to Patrick because she was certain that the five-name exercise had finally blown her cover. Thus, she wanted to explain to Patrick why she had done so miserably on the test. Patrick tried to console her. The truth was that her test paper was indistinguishable from the others, except that it may have been marginally better than most.

So this was bottom. High school seniors fared no better than a girl who hadn't been to school for the first fourteen years of her life.