The Story of My Life

I've always been a B-average student. My GPA in both high school and university was at a 3 point something which translates into a B. In almost everything that I do and am, I am just average. I'm not pretty, but easy on the eyes. I'm a mediocre athlete. I sing ok. I come from a middle-income family and my parents' house literally sits in the middle of the west-east divider (well, maybe two blocks away). I don't do a half-baked job on assignments or tasks, but the end result is usually just Meh! Look up "average" in the dictionary and my picture will be right there (see "Homer Defined," Episode 8F04, Season Three).

I turned on the TV yesterday to watch the Simpsons, but because D and I were watching a video the night before (Flushed Away), our TV was set on Channel 3. Being the English teacher/nerd that I am, I caught someone saying "English Teachers Team" then a round of applause and cheer. It turned out that the show was "Test the Nation: Watch Your Language" .

I had mentioned Test the Nation in a previous post, but that was done online. This TV show consisted of seven teams of people who generally would use literary skills on a daily basis and they compete for a trophy for being the smartest in literary aptitude. Not only were the studio audience participating in the test, but so were several schools across the country and viewers at home. I took out my pen and paper and started answering the questions during the two-hour show. By the end of the show, they have revealed the answers and I came out with 77%. According to the scoring chart I got "A for Astute", but 77% is a B. Of course. The embarrassing part of my mark is that I failed miserably (in that I did not get one single answer correct) in the one category that I had taken a university course in. Can you guess which one out of the following?

Language Terms, Modern English, Everyday Mistakes, Text (Messaging) Talk, Plurals, Canadian Language (Jargon), Nursery Rhymes, Euphemisms, Expressions (Idioms), Word Origin, and Spelling.