The Ultimate Test

The Ultimate Test

The second he opened his eyes, he realized this was the day he had anticipated for so long.  Today, Hector Smarmy would prove just what he was made of.  Relishing the challenge that lay ahead of him, he leaped from his bed.  With rabid anticipation, he began his physical preparations to face the day.  He donned the jeans he had left crumpled on the bedroom floor the night before and strode purposefully to the bathroom.

Standing before the bathroom mirror, he studied his reflection.  A bad case of mattress hair and facial stubble peered back at him.  "Hmmm, not too bad.  But the left side needs work."  Hector poured a dollop of Dippity-Doo into his palm and massaged it into his hair, coaxing the short strands into peaks pointing in every direction.  He surveyed his handiwork.  He noticed his facial stubble was getting just long enough to give the impression he was growing a beard. "Can't have that," he mumbled as he deftly whipped his hair clipper across his face, sending old whiskers skittering into the sink and down the drain.  When he was done, he had left just enough stubble to give him that grungy appearance for which he was well known.  Now, satisfied with what he saw in the mirror, he exited the bathroom.

He strode back to the bed, reaching under the pillow, and grabbed the dingy shirt he had stuffed under it the night before.  Putting it on, he admired his image in the bedroom mirror.  "Ah!  Just one thing missing."  He retrieved his greasy baseball cap, turned it backward, and painstakingly placed it on his head at what he hoped was a jaunty angle.  Slipping his sockless feet into well-worn Wal-Mart penny loafers, he was ready to face the world and the challenge ahead of him.

Strolling out to the curb, kicking empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and fast food rubble out of his path, he admired his crumbling old Gremlin sitting placidly at the curb.  "Not much to look at, but it gets me where I'm going," he silently mused.  He hopped into the driver's seat, rammed the key into the ignition, and began the requisite cranking required to start the cantankerous engine.  After repeated attempts to fire her up, she caught, coughed, and sputtered to life.  Hector roared away from the curb leaving a cayenne pepper-colored rust cloud behind him.

Talking to himself, as he often did when there was no one around to talk to, he pontificated on the task he now faced, "I am so glad they are giving me this opportunity to prove my superior intellect.  I will absolutely wow them into submission, and they will never try to question my right to monopolize the professor's class time again.  I'll make them rue the day they questioned me."  As Hector droned on and on, he drew closer and closer to his appointment with destiny.  The closer he got to his journey's end, the more confident he became that the outcome of this test would prove him triumphant.  With that thought, he arrived at the designated rendezvous point.

The group was already assembled and awaiting his arrival.  Silently they watched him approach, ready to bury him in an avalanche of questions they had spent the past week preparing.  But Hector didn't flinch--he was ready.  No question was too complicated for him.  He could handle anything.  Boy, would they be surprised.

Ground rules had already been established, so there was nothing to keep them from getting right to the reason they were all there.  Hector would have all the time he needed to successfully complete their test.  "Foolish people thought they could come up with questions hard enough to stop me in my tracks.  I'll show them," he laughed inwardly.  So there would be no time limit.  The test would be graded immediately after he finished it and the grading system was a simple one.  If Hector answered all the questions correctly, he could stay in the class for the rest of the term.  But if he failed to answer even one of them to the satisfaction of the group, he would withdraw from the course and leave them all in peace.

Hector felt equal to the task. Wearing a smug little smirk on his face, he took the test in hand, whipped out his pen, and began with the fill-in-the-blanks.  Whipping through them at lightning speed, he was finished in a flash and knee-deep in a page-long matching section before the group could catch their breath.  Each one of them began to look deeply concerned that they might have under-estimated Hector's intellectual capabilities.  Before they could say English Composition II, Hector was done and heavily involved in the True/False.  As his fellow students breathed a collective, heavy sigh, he breezed quickly through that area as well.  Now they were really concerned, and extremely disheartened at the thought of having to put up with Hector and his soapbox antics for the remainder of the term.

Hector reached the final area of the test--the essay questions.  At this point, the group lost all hope, for they knew that Hector would excel at essay questions.  The nature of the questions might slow him down a bit, but Hector never missed an opportunity to demonstrate that he could drone on and on about anything, whether orally or in writing.  So why was it that Mary, the author of the essay questions, did not seem to look as crestfallen as the rest of the group?  She was the one person who had failed to look concerned as Hector sailed through to this point in the test.  Was she privy to something that everyone else had missed?  Only time would tell.

At this point, time seemed to stop.  Hector took one long, deep breath and began with the first question.  Just when everyone had begun to give up on his ever finishing it, he was done.  He set his pencil down, stretched his arms above his head, and cracked his knuckles.  He wanted to bask in the disappointment permeating this group of his classmates.  Surely by now, they had concluded that all was lost for them.  Hector would triumph and continue to wreak havoc in their classroom week after week after week.  "Well, back to work."  Hector returned to the task before him.  Diligently and methodically, he answered each essay question so thoroughly each answer seemed clad in cement.  No chinks in any answer to let in any light of doubt that Hector knew exactly what he was talking about.  With each passing second, the group, with the exception of Mary, became more and more discouraged.

At long last, Hector was ready to commence answering the final essay question.  Unwilling to pass up the opportunity to savor these final moments, he surveyed the entire group and asked, "Mind if I stretch my legs?"  He rose from his seat, stretched, performed a couple of toe touches, cracked his neck from side to side, and smiling smugly at his fellow students, again took up his pen.  He quickly scanned the question.  Abruptly the smile left his face.  He began to redden and his dismay turned to anger.  "Who wrote this?" he exclaimed as he jumped to his feet.  "This is dirty pool!  It's a sneaky, underhanded tactic!  Who did it?"  The entire group was stunned, except for Mary.  Slowly, a glimmer of hope shone on what had been a dismal horizon.

Completely dismayed and looking totally dejected, Hector stumbled away from the group and, head bowed, shuffled out to his rust-bucket old Gremlin.  As he approached the dilapidated heap, they could hear him mumbling, "Maybe it's not too late to sign up for World Religions."  He was still mumbling to himself when he roared off down the road.

The group was in shock.  But it was a shock born of pure delight.  Eagerly and happily, they asked Mary to explain what they had just witnessed.  Her answer was simple; "You'll understand when you see the final essay question."  She was right.  As soon as they saw it, Hector's reaction and subsequent failure to answer became crystal clear.  The question?  Define genre in 25 words or less.