For those times when "The Dog Ate My Homework" just won't cut it.

[captainsblog]

It's Regents Exam season here in the Empire State. These are a unique beast of standardized testing, in existence all my life and for generations before, when all students at given high school course levels in this state take the same final exam at the same time for the coveted diploma approved by the State Board of Regents.

I thought I'd worked my way through most of the excuses for avoiding these back in my own time. My first one was scheduled to have been in algebra, at the end of eighth grade. My excuse for that one was a near-death experience that consumed my left kidney the week before exams.  (I went in for the post-summer school administration of the test that August and got 100% on it.)

A year or two later everyone in my class caught a broader break. Some Yeshiva kids in the city had managed to get their hands on the tests before their scheduled administration dates, and every Regents offered by that school, including several of mine, got cancelled statewide. (This was, according to the New York Times, the first time in a century that the protocol had been breached. It happened again in 1989, again with students at a Yeshiva causing the panic. I draw no conclusions from that whatsoever, even if I did still remember how to diagram a syllogism.)

These days, my only connection to the process is as Emily's chauffeur, since the buses don't run on the Regents' two-a-day schedule. I duly took her for one of her finals today. Turns out, though, she had a much calmer time of it than the kids did back at my old high school on The Island, according to this Newsday story which won't have a working link in a week, dammit:

From car mechanics to hospital patients to test-taking students, a police chase and subsequent arrest of two suspected bank robbers made for one memorable Friday.

For some, it was more memorable than others.

Mechanic Terry Ceaser was working on a car at Somerset Tire Service across the street from Nassau University Medical Center when he heard the sound of screeching brakes that police say turned out to be the getaway car from a Bellmore bank robbery.

Ceaser, 44, of Westbury, said he saw money flying out of the car. He and colleague Pete Hadjispyrou, 60, stopped working, ran into the middle of Hempstead Turnpike and started grabbing money while the car pulled into the East Meadow hospital's emergency entrance.

"Fives, tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds," Ceaser said. "I had at least three grand in my hands. That was the most shocking thing I've seen in a while."

Police were there within seconds, the workers said.

"They said 'give it back to us,' " said Hadjispyrou, of Bay Ridge. "So we did."

Well, yeah. Loaded service revolvers tend to have that effect on witnesses. (More about that particular tire place at the end. And karma connection #1 here: that hospital, formerly Nassau County Medical Center and before that Meadowbrook Hospital, was the one I was taken to with my damaged kidney, and the one where an alert surgical resident saved my damn life in 1973.)

But I digress. Back to the school story:

At East Meadow High, students in the building taking Regents exams were ordered to stay inside until police concluded their investigation across the street.

Parents coming to pick up the students were met by police and a sherriff's barricade at the school's entrance. Police handed out fliers to parents that said to call the East Meadow High School hotline.

Students who had completed their Regents exams were seen standing by one of the locked entrances.

Standing outside the school, Marco Cedillo, 15, who was scheduled to take the noon earth science Regents, said he heard from a friend's father about the bank robbery.

"I really don't feel like taking it in August," he said, referring to the Regents exam. "I want to get it over with today."

I dunno, dude. The August ones must be easier, or how would I have aced it after major surgery and then two months with no school or review?

----

Even odder postscript: the tire place with the flying money? I remember that automotive chain well; they had a location here on Sheridan Drive, next to our vet, until they pulled out of Western NY a few years back. But I remember the East Meadow location even upper-close and personal from my trip down there last November.  After I drove 400 miles (the last half of them with my sister) to attend our brother-in-law's funeral? One of my tires blew in the 400-somethingth and final mile of the voyage in the parking lot of the funeral home. My niece's boyfriend put the donut tire on it, but I had to get the real one repaired or replaced before heading home. My first stop? That tire store.

For the record, I also got 100s on my Regents exams in American History and Weird Coincidences.

Comments

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

Regents sound like Gateways Exams in TN. I missed the Gateways in TN by a few years. At the time of my graduation we were required to pass an Exit Exam that I swear was on a 6th grade level. I remember really struggling with the math, because I was taking Pre-Cal at the time, and couldn't do math unless it had a Greek letter in it. I had literally forgotten how to divide fractions, but I could do limits and derivatives.

And, uh, yeah...you have to return money from a robbery. Something to do with it being evidence, and oh, yeah, not yours.

[luckycee.livejournal.com]

I passed 'em, that's all I cared about at the time, damned Regents. I graduated from Nazareth College at the ripe old age of 34 with a GPA of 3.92 Magna cum Laude and I cared about that a lot more.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm impressed. My undergraduate cume was lucky to have a 3 at the beginning of it. Of course, cutting a third or more of my classes from sophomore year on might have had something to do with that.

And you might have just missed Eleanor there. She got her BA from Geneseo in '78, but she went back to Naz for art courses in the mid-80s. Susan Ferrari Rowley is the one faculty name I remember; she kept in touch with her for years after that.

[luckycee.livejournal.com]

I graduated in 1990 and I was stuck in the Social Work department!