Okay class! Pop quiz. If you've been doing the readings, this should be a piece of cake. Remember to fill out both sides of this paper. You have the whole class period to finish. Good luck.
- Mason Harper first traveled to the Americas using which means of transportation?
A) A cargo ship
B) A steam locomotive
C) A Boeing 747 airliner
D) A vintage red 1985 Camaro with a crack in the middle of the windshield and no heated seats
- What is the term for the settlers leaving England to journey to America?
A) Immigration
B) Emigration
C) Migration
D) A breakup
- What is the name of the people who were already living in America before the arrival of the Peregrine?
A) Indigenous Peoples
B) New Yorkers
C) Canadians
D) A fiancée
- Founded in the early 1600s, Thanksgiving best symbolizes which of the following?
A) Eating a Tofurky dinner alone in a home that smells like pumpkin pie and the leftover bottle of aftershave you found under the bathroom sink and summarily poured down the drain
B) A celebration of the harvest and a means of giving thanks for other such blessings of the year
C) Your five-year-old son choosing to spend the holiday at his father's new apartment
D) Both A and C
- Harper, Massachusetts, was famous for its witch trials, wherein a number of men and women were accused of performing acts of dark magic and sentenced to death. Now, imagine a woman named, say, Lucy. Which of the following is something a guilty woman like Lucy might reasonably have been accused of?
A) Sneaking off with another woman's fiancé during your springtime PTA meetings
B) Luring a woman's son to Thanksgiving dinner with the promise of cooking a real turkey
C) Driving a vintage red 1985 Camaro that doesn't belong to her to the Safeway in your neighborhood, despite her apartment, which she now shares with the car's owner, being on the other side of town, twenty-five minutes away.
D) All of the above
- Please select the adjective you think best describes Lucy from the previous example.
A) Caring
B) Considerate
C) Thoughtful
D) None of the above
- Please select the adjective (or phrase!) you think best describes the nameless fiancé from question 5.
A) Ignorant
B) Hedonistic
C) Confused
D) Doesn't understand he's letting a good thing go by choosing Lucy instead of the superior PTA woman.
- What is the definition of a "settler"?
A) A person who journeys, especially a long distance, to some sacred place.
B) A person who journeys, especially twenty-five minutes away, to an apartment in the gutter of Maplewood, North Dakota.
C) A person who journeys, especially twenty-five minutes away, to a supermarket in the heartland of Maplewood, North Dakota, with the intent of running into people on the PTA so she can "accidentally" display her new engagement ring, the same sapphire ring that fit on someone else's finger not too long ago.
D) A woman who shares joint custody of her turkey-bribed son, a woman who tucks him in and reads him a bedtime story every night and kisses him on the forehead, then spends the next thirty minutes scrolling through her ex-fiancé's social media posts in the hopes that she'll see her name pop up.
- What is the name for someone who invades a foreign state or nation with the intent to dominate or gain control over its settlers?
A) Homewrecker
B) Adulterer
C) Lucy
D) Colonialist
- What was the reason the settlers left their first home and strayed to America?
A) They said their needs weren't being met with England.
B) They wanted to break away from the Protestant Church and start their own religious community.
C) They said they hadn't been truly happy in a long, long time.
D) They said the only reason they hung in there as long as they did was because of their five-year-old.
- Which of the following statements is true, pertaining to question 10?
A) England watched the settlers sail away to America, watched them drift toward the horizon until they were nothing but a speck in the sunset, knowing there was nothing they could do.
B) England waited for days, weeks, months, hoping the settlers would come back, checking every starlit night for a sign of their return.
C) England would still take them back with open arms, even after they chose another place and another life, if they only chose to come back.
D) All of the above
- Do you think the settlers ever thought about returning to England when they were off with their homewreckers/adulterers/Lucys/colonialists?
A) Yes, definitely
B) Maybe once in a while
C) Every other weekend, when the joint custody kicked in
D) No (briefly explain your reasoning in the space below, if chosen)
- How quickly things change. Not even 200 years after the arrival of the settlers to America, the founding fathers spearheaded the American Revolution, instituted the presidential system, and even created the Declaration of Independence. Which of the following is a line from that famous document?
A) "We need to talk."
B) "Look, Janet, this just isn't working out anymore. It's not you, it's me. Please don't bring Lucy into this."
C) "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
D) "Daddy said you can come to his wedding with me, Mommy. Why are you crying? He said you can come too."
Extra credit bonus question: You finish your quiz early. When you walk up to the front to turn it in, you notice your teacher is at her desk, silently weeping into her thermos of lukewarm first-period coffee. What should you do?
A) Turn in your paper, say nothing, and return to your desk—chances are that if she scheduled a quiz for the entire class period, she probably needs some time to herself.
B) Turn in your paper, say nothing, and return to your desk—chances are that your teacher is like England when they were waiting for the settlers to return, and with enough time, she'll understand the truth.
C) Turn in your paper, say nothing, and return to your desk—chances are that you could end up like her someday, because history repeats itself.
D) All of the above.