Telegram for John Watson (Cont.)
Screen 2 of 3The teacher watched John's face as he read the telegram with some apparent concern, and it was obvious she was worried for him. We all knew telegrams did not come often, and when they did they usually brought bad news--death, accident, or a disaster of some kind. She then went quietly to John's seat after he had put the telegram back into the envelope. Seated so close to him, I could easily hear their whispered conversation. She asked him if everything was all right at home and whether he would like to be excused from class, because of the news he had received. He thanked her but said he could handle the matter later, adding he wanted to remain in class and finish the examination.
Obviously relieved, Miss Strayhorn returned to her desk at the front of the room, and everyone continued with the examination.
With only about fifteen minutes remaining in the two-hour examination period, I noticed that John was taking the Western Union envelope out of his shirt pocket and looking again at the telegram. All that was understandable, and as I watched him out of the corner of my eye I too wondered what news it bore. But when I looked more carefully and realized the sheet he pulled out and unfolded was not the regular Western Union telegram yellow paper, I sensed that something was wrong.
The "telegram" he had taken from the envelope was the same dittoed sheet of examination questions each of us had received from the teacher at the beginning of the period. But even knowing this, I could not figure out what had happened. Several possible explanations began to race through my mind; yet none of them seemed to make any sense.
The period soon ended, and all the students, including John, handed in their papers before leaving. I felt sure I had not solved all the problems correctly but was satisfied I had done reasonably well, considering all that had happened during the past two hours.
Once outside, John caught up with me. He was smiling and obviously excited. Why so happy? I asked. How did you do on the exam? Boastfully exuberant, he then told me everything. I was astonished at how openly he spun out the whole story without apology or concern. He had beaten the system, he claimed, and as we walked across the campus, I learned the details.
After looking at the examination questions, he was sure he could not answer them, and so when no one was looking he threw the dittoed sheet out the window to the ground below, where his roommate, a math major, was waiting to catch it. Working these simple problems was of course easy for the room mate; and as he and John had planned earlier, he put the answers in the correct blank spaces after doing the necessary calculations on the back. The next step in the plan, John explained, was to pay a Western Union messenger boy to deliver the "telegram" to John Watson at the algebra class. I knew the rest. I had seen it first hand.
It was all very simple--"and clever," John declared when he finished telling me the story.
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