My friend Miso, the doctor-guy who is now doing AIDS related research in San Diego, and me were the best in math in our class. In old Yugoslavia classmates sit in pairs, and during exams there were always A and B issues of test to prevent "counseling," so what we did is to sit as a pair before the math exam in order to be awarded different exam issues. We would then put a carbon paper and a piece of white paper underneath our test, shared our reliable TI-30 and do tests quickly. As we did the test, we would leave the classroom passing copies of results to the bench behind. Till the end of the test-time entire class would usually be able to correct its answers.

However, we were not impervious to mistakes. And our mistakes were unusual, not something that an average high school football player would come up with, so math teacher became suspicious. Dunja Paukner-Stojkov was young, tall, quite a babe for a math teacher, and she never ever cut her long groomed pink coloured nails, so we always made fun of her finger acrobacy which she had to perform in order to write something on a blackboard with a chalk. Teenage macho sexism probably never allowed us (me and Miso) to consider that she might know math better than us. She rarely rised her voice, and her explanations were sometimes so arcane that people in the classroom barely understood them. She was timid, and very introvert, a kind of teacher you might decide to cheat on.

Once she suspected of cheating, she knew whom to monitor during the next test. It was the last math test in the year. The last in our high school education, since we did not have math in our junior and senior years. It was the mother of all finals. So, in an unobvious way, and from the decent distance she carefully watched how Miso and me were doing it. Suddenly she approached our desk asking us to turn her over things that we kept underneath our tests. We bluntly denied any wrongdoing, of course, telling her that there is nothing under our exam papers. Class went silent. It was as quiet as in a grave. No usual buzzing and subtle whispering of formulas and numbers from friend to friend. I believe everybody stopped writing, too. It seemed, they stopped breathing, although I wouldn't go as far. She stopped breathing. That's for sure, since she turned normandie blue. Miso and me "accidentally" turned around our desk so all the papers went all over the floor (exams, carbon papers, copies). She started yelling at us sorts of unladylike things that we would never suppose may come out from those soft and glowing lips. Finally, we were kicked out from the exam with the equivalent of the F grade (however, considering our previous coursework we both got an A in math later anyway), and the rest of the class was doomed to carry the lower than expected math grade to their future life endeavors.

Later in our senior year we had all those classes that were supposed to prepare us for the "real life", like museology, typing, archive science and librarian science. I wouldn't have believed such a thing exists if I didn't have to pass the exam in each of them. None of us anyway planned on becoming a career librarian, or any of those other adventurous and glamorous career oportunities created just for us. So, we decided, we as a class, as a generation, that we might just as well try to cheat our way through that. Some teachers tried to make those classes more fun - like the woman that taught museology: she took us to see actual museums, that sometimes was interesting to some of us, and the rest always had the option to visit the nearest pub. Should I again note that there was never any drinking age in our undemocratic little dictatorship?

The witch that taught librarian scienece was different. She took herself seriously. Even more, she wanted us to take her seriously. And she did not offer much. Once when she entered the classroom and started lecturing, my friend Toni rose and opened windows. She asked him why he was doing that. He said: "To let stupidity leave the classroom." We all laughed. She laughed, too. So, we laughed even more. Heh. heh. heh.

The day of final exam in librarian science came at one of extraordinary, almost newyorkean, hot and humid day in Zagreb in May 1982. We had two classes of librarian science that day. One was earlier in the morning, while the other, when the test was supposed to take place, was around 1 or 2 pm. Irradiating and beaming in satisfaction that she would have a chance to punish us for all the cruel jokes we pulled on her for that year, she brought her ultimate achievement - the pile of finals - with here to the classroom on their first class, proudly displaying the sheer quantity of material. She must have done that intentionally to lower our morale. So she stood facing the classroom with tests on her teachers desk answering our questions on what test would be about. She never let her right hand move off the pile. She firmly pressed it with her fist, throwing at least third of her weight in that. Suddenly somebody said loud that Ivica (that meant me) wrote a play, that was funny. Since, I wrote funny stuff before, and she knew it and liked it, somebody probably hoped she'd be interested to read the stuff. She did. Delighted, I gave her the play. I stood right in front of her, very close, almost touching her matronely body, patiently waiting for her to have to turn the page. Slowly and cautiously she moved her right hand off the test-pile, aithout taking her eyes off the text, turned the page, and let the hand do the pressing thing again. That moment did not last more than the period between the lightning and thunder, but was enough for me to take the uppermost test of the file, and pass it behind my back to guys in front row.

In next five hours the nerds and geeks of our class got together and solved the test, went to the print shop, typed it out and xeroxed in as many copies as there were people in the class, so that everybody got his or hers own copy. There were whiners and wankers, as always, moaning how the school would nullify results if everybody gets an A, because the school would then know that there was cheating involved. However, they did not refuse to take their copy of results.

Almost at the end of the exam time, one of those who probably never cheated before gave up. Her copy of results dropped out of the grip of her left hand on the floor right when the teacher was standing at her desk, so to say, right in front of teachers eyes. She picked it up, but it was already to late.

She had to give it up on a demand of teacher. Ohmigod, what a face. I would never forget that face of helpless desperation. Her test! The test she was so proud of has been broken into, has been taken away from her. All the pleasure she had making us doing that test just withered away in seconds. Was she devastated, oh boy. She collected the exams and left the classroom. Some of us even felt sory for her.

She refused to give another exam, but the school rejected her wish to flunk our entire class, so she had to give us the grades mostly just based on showing up. So, we ended up with As and Bs anyway. She actually healed herself from this one and was able to joke with some of my classmates about it just few weeks later.

Today, almost a teenage pregnancy later, at my pool lifeguard job, I read a story in Newsweek about some Brian Pirko, kicked out of the U.S. Naval Academy for sharing the football gouge with her fellow class and teammates (football gouge meaning anything that would help you pass the test, that is idiot-proof enough so it would help even a football player pass the test; in the same slang, for example, that that I did to my librarian science exam would be called "bum gouge"). Although obviously in posession of both the excellent leadership abilities and a sense of developing meaningful teamwork, Pirko, himself an A student, was rejected by the University of Maryland. At the point of interview, he was considering enrolling in lifeguard school. Welcome aboard Brian.