MISC: Responses to Vol 152, Issue 23

[George Phillies]

>> year-older sister Jessamine Trishaset nodded enthusiastic agreement.
>
> Different last name? Interesting.

that's her middle name.  She goes by "Trisha".

>> “Da-aad,” Brian complained, not quite seriously.  “The other choice was
>> getting stomped flat by a giant robot.  It could have appeared anywhere
>> in Massachusetts, and it just had to appear right in front of my school.
>
> Y'know, I hate when that happens~

Lord Roxbury's Spotter told him where the strongest local opposition 
was, so he started there first, so all else would cower before him.

It was a plan.
As always, Drew, I am grateful for your remarks.

>>     “To answer your question,” Janie added,  “I got straight As on my
>> exams, well, mayhaps not A+s in all of them.  Except Romeo and Juliet
>> makes absolutely no sense at all.  I just wrote down what I memorized
>> from those other books. You were right, Dad.  Finding those other books
>> helped a lot. But if I had crossed out half the ‘not’s in my sentences,
>> what I wrote would have made exactly as much sense. The teacher said it
>> was enough extra books, not just one, and I could name them, so I got my
>> A. How did you do it, Brian? How did you pull an A+? We read the same
>> extra books.”
>
> Hmmmmm. *rubs chin* Not sure what this paragraph is implying.

parents urged him to read extra books on the topic.  he did as he was told.

>> “I lucked out,” Brian said.  “I guessed Romeo and Juliet had something
>> to do with romance novels.  I can’t tell what. I wasn’t really sure.”
>
> Huh. O.o
>
> Drew "is this personal, or cultural?" Perron

He's in seventh grade.  He's twelve. Barely. He finds the concept of 
romantic love to be incomprehensible.

When i was in his position we read "Ethan Frome".  The plot is not 
spelled out at all. In 1960, a schoolteacher who mentioned to her 
students the concepts of divorce, adultery, or abandonment which are the 
unspoken plot would have been hanged, shot, drawn and quartered, or all 
three.  So either you knew what was happening, or "Oh, there was a 
sledding accident. This is major literature?"