I mean, I had trouble learning the rules, so what does she go out and do? Test us on the exceptions to those rules, that's what! And me, the highest grade I got was a sixty-two. That is until the final. See, the final dealt with the basics, with those rules I had struggled so hard to learn but was never tested on. Well, I passed the final, actually did pretty well. Indeed, not only did I get the highest grade of anyone in class; I was, in fact, the only one who passed. Everyone else failed, even the "A" students destined for the liked of Harvard and Yale failed. Everyone failed, everyone but me.

But, there's this magical thing called a scale. A scale is a thing which makes it possible fore everyone to retain their grade despite what they got on the final: The A students kept their A's; the B students, their B's; the C's, their C's; the D's, their D's; and the failures like me kept their E's.

I suggested that I should have gotten an A plus plus, but I was just having fun. I mean, she could give me E, E, E, E, year average E; but, from what she said before we took the test, I knew that I knew more than any of them. What does Latin matter anyway? How much can being good in a dead language mean in the greater scheme of life?

Those A students who went to the national debating championship defended their position well. I mean, I guess they did. It's a funny thing though, only teachers can understand what they said. Most kids didn't know what they were talking about. For myself, I couldn't make head or tails of it.

One guy, "a massive retard" is what they call him, says that if we wore suits and ties like them, we would understand them. Says we would probably talk like them. Most of us "less gifted students" feel that when you get right down to it, these others are just trying to make us feel stupid by using words that we don't understand.

They have their own special language, and they use it to make us feel sorry we were ever born. Most of the time, I just thought them different; but I could see playing favorites when it happened. It can just ruin your whole day when you ask a question, and the teacher or her pet answers, "Oh, that's beyond you. You could not possibly understand."

It seems to me that this thing, "rhetoric," they try so hard to "perfect," is just a weapon fancy dressers use to hurt people like me, to hurt people not like themselves. It's like punching someone, except that they beat-up on your feelings. And I don't care what they say, hurting someone's feelings is worse than giving him a black eye. A lot worse.

And those guys never seem to be any good at sports either. David though was a pretty good basketball player. That is, until everyone else grew up. David never grew up. He's real short. The massive retard says that that is because he is Jewish, and shortness is in the Jewish blood. He says that most Jews are short and that if you check you'll find that professional basketball is basically a Christian sport.