Grand Avenue by Mike Thompson for April 07, 2024

Gary Larsen did a Far Side toon along these lines once. Cave man Dad was complaining about his son’s report card: “Look at dis. He fail History, something not even happen yet!”

There was this joke where the teacher told the kid she knew all the presidents’ names when she was a kid and he said “But there were only two or three back then.”

Ah, yes, Gerald Ford…could a finer President ever be non-elected. did such a good job in office the navy named an aircraft carrier for him.

Why sit in the corner? Dennis the Menace occassionally does that!

I’m with the kid! What did he say?

Kid, ya gotta learn about FILTERS. . .

He’s not not right.

Hee hee better sit there and think about that remark, kid.

I had a modern European history course in the Fall of 1989. Toward the end, the professor had to preface his lectures with, “Up until a few weeks ago…”, as there was a surfeit of European history going on at the time, with the Fall of the Berlin Wall and related events.

Oh come on. I had history in both junior and senior high. In both cases they spent such an inordinate proportion of the school year beating the dead horse on slavery and the civil war that there wasn’t enough time left over to make it very far into the 1900’s. (It’s no wonder there are people today who believe the Holocaust never really happened!) No doubt there must be at least a cursory mention of 9/11 by now, but even so I doubt that the fact that well over 40 years have passed since my last history class has caused them to go the equivalent of 40 years’ worth of detail, studying and homework beyond what I had.

This joke is at least a hundred years old. Anybody know who first came up with it?