Substitute teachers have to have one of the hardest jobs I can think of. I only ever had one that I liked and learned from – although the lesson was not part of the regular curriculum. This young teacher, perhaps trying to relate to us kids, decided one day to teach us how to pass time in class while looking like we were working on something.
He had us write down on a piece of paper the letters of the alphabet in one column:
Then he had us choose a section from whatever book we had handy and write a random sentence down a second column.
The instruction then was to see how many famous names you could match to the pair of initials on your page. From a teacher’s perspective, it looked like we were studiously working on a difficult assignment.
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I played this little memory game in class when I was bored which was, as I recall, often. I don’t know what happened to that substitute or what career he finally settled upon but I owe him a major debt of gratitude. His little trick got me through calculus.
Here’s an example. See how many celebrities you can plug in to the following list of initials:
AN – Anthony Newley
BO – Bobby Orr
CW – Carl Withers
DI – Daniel Inouye
ES – Edward Snowden
FT – Forrest Tucker
GH – George Hamilton
HE – Hector Elizando
IW – Irving Wallace
JI – Jeremy Irons
KN – Kevin Nealon
LT – Lawrence Taylor
ME – Mamie Eisenhower
NR – Nancy Reagan
OO – Ozzy Osbourne
PF – Peter Frampton
QO – ????????
RU – ?????????
SR – Sally Ride
TD – Tommy Dorsey
UI – ????????????
VS – Vin Scully
WC – Walter Cronkite
XO – ??????????
YN – ??????????
ZT – Zachary Taylor
I came up with 20 out of 26. Not a bad score. You can see my answers by dragging your cursor over the space next to the initials. How many could you think of?
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