BRASS ONES

     Before break.
     "Rich," said Howard, in that tone that could only mean two
	things:  Either a term paper was due or he'd wrecked the car. 
	Since we don't have a car I said, "What class?"
     "Asian studies.  It's that whole Taoism, Buddhist Zen thing."
     "You haven't been to a class all year, have you?"
     "It's a nine o'clock.  But I did make it to the first one. 
	Got the syllabus."  He handed it to me.  
     "Have you read any of these?"
     "Never bought them.  I skimmed them in the library before the
	midterm.  Got a b minus."
     "Any papers?"
     "Two.  Blew em off."
     "Great."
     "I don't want to fail this class.  I'll just have to take ano--"
     "All right.  Let's think."  I lit up a joint, took a drag,
	passed it to him.  "How big are your balls," I said.
     "Big enough.  Wha--"
     "All right.  I got an idea."  Got up, grabbed a pen and a
	sheet of paper, scribbled something on it and handed it to him. 
	"There's your paper."  He looked at it and laughed.
     "No way.  I'll flunk."
     "Probably.  So why not do it with style?"
     A few days later he said, "Professor wants to see me in his
	office tomorrow."
     "Could be trouble."
     "I'll live."
     After.
     "So how'd it go?"
     "Check it out.  I'm in there, and he says, 'Howard, you
	haven't been to a class all year, have you?'  I shook my head. 
	'Did you even *buy* the books?'  Kept shaking it.  He points to a
	pile of papers on his desk and says 'I've been a professor here for
	twenty some odd years.  I've read thousands of these papers.  But
	this', he says, pulling out mine, 'is the only one that I'll
	remember after the semester ends.  What the hell were you
	thinking?'  I say, 'I didn't want to insult you buy pulling an all-
	nighter and putting together some half-plagiarized piece of crap. 
	Figured you get enough of those.'"
       Wow, I thought, he's good.
       My brother sat down and said, 'Howard,' he says, 'You
	probably heard about the guy who, on a philosophy exam, saw the
	question, 'Why?' and answered 'Why not?', right?'  Yeah, I say, I
	always figured that was some kind of urban legend.  'No', he says,
	'it happened.  The first student to ever do it probably got an A.
	After that, all F's.  Now, no one in his right would put that
	on a test'  'This', he says, holding up my paper, is the same sort
	of thing'."
     "He gave you an *A*??," I say, incredulous.
     "Um, not exactly," Howard said, handing me the yellow see-
	through binder with the single page in it.  It said:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
	------------------------------------------------------------------
      	             FOOTNOTES 
	1.Ibid.
 
 
 
 
 
     Below it there was a red 'F' with a circle around it.
     "Am I missing something?" I say.  "He gave you an 'F'."
     "But I got an 'A' for the course, on the condition that I read
	these books over the summeing."
     "I got an ace up my sleeve," said Howard, folding a stick of
	Big Red into his mouth and handing me the pack.  I took one and
	said, "Ace, eh?"  Then I looked at my brother and between us there
	passed those two words that soon had both of us hysterical, on the
	floor.
     Op cit.
     
	RICHH