Free Southern Fried Rat and Other Gruesome Tales by Daniel Cohen

filling the first book with anything that came into his head. Advertising slogans, nursery rhymes, anything. All he had to do was look as if he were working hard.
    When he had filled the first book with all that nonsense, he took the second book and wrote a big number "2" on the cover. Then he wrote what appeared to be the last sentence of an answer to the first question. Right under that, he began his answer for question number two. It was a beautifully worked-out answer, a sure A. When the exam was over, Steve got in a crowd of other students turning in their exam books. But he turned in only the second book. The first one was carefully hidden under his shirt.
    A few anxious days later Steve got a postcard from his American Lit professor. Steve was told that he got an A in the course. The professor also apologized for having lost the first part of his exam.
    Steve's partner in indolence, his friend Jack, had an even worse problem. He didn't know the answer to either of the questions. But he was even cooler and more resourceful than Steve. Jack took one of the blue books and used it to write a letter to his mother in Boston. He said that he was writing to her because he had already finished his final exam and was waiting for a friend to finish. He apologized for not writing sooner but said that he had been studying very hard for this particular test and had had no time. He also said that he thought he did pretty well on the test, but that the professor, though a good guy, had very high standards.
    When time was up, Jack handed in only the blue book with the letter to his mother in it. He had the blank blue book hidden in his notebook. He rushed back to his room, looked up the answers to the questions, and wrote them in the blue book. Then he put the blue book in an envelope and mailed it to his mother.
    A few hours later Jack got a call from the professor, who was very puzzled. He wanted to know why Jack had given him a letter to his mother in Boston and not the answers to the final exam. Jack gasped. He said that there must have been a horrible mix-up and that he had by mistake handed in the letter to his mother and mailed his exam to Boston. He offered to call his mother in Boston, explain the situation, and have her mail back the letter, unopened, to prove that no one had tampered with it. The professor agreed to this plan, so Jack called his mother. She mailed back the unopened envelope with the blue book containing the answers Jack had looked up after the exam. Jack gave it to his professor. Jack got a B on his final.
    Sometimes schools don't use blue books. What do you do then? Well, Lance, who went to high school in Los Angeles, came up with an ingenious solution when he was given a difficult two-page quiz. He knew that there was no way in the world he would be able to finish the entire test. So he spent all his time working on the second page. At the end of the period he handed in only the second page, concealing the first page in his notebook.
    He used the next period to quickly look up the answers to the questions on the first page and write them in. Then he took the test paper, threw it on the ground, and trampled all over it. He gave the paper to a friend who had a later class in the same room.
    When the friend handed the dirty, stepped-on paper to the teacher, he said that he had found it on the floor "in the back" and thought it might be important. The teacher checked through all of the test papers, and sure enough, Lance's paper was missing the first page. When the two pages were marked together, Lance got an A on the test.
     
    In folklore throughout the world there is a familiar figure called the trickster. He or she may be a person or an animal, usually one who is weak or in an inferior position. Somehow the trickster manages to outwit those above him. In the stories it may be the rabbit outwitting the fox, the slave outwitting his master, the poor man outwitting the rich man, the simple farmer putting one