Multiple Choice

(7) Percentage of my children who declared their hate for me not with words but with action (a punch in the left eye): 16.6.

(8) Children of mine who have asked my forgiveness: four.

(9) Two of my sons learned to clip their fingernails and tie their shoes before they were three years old. I taught all of them to drive before they were eighteen.

(10) Children of mine who have run over dogs: two. Children of mine who have run over people: one.

(11) Children of mine who work in the public sector: two. Private: two. Neither public nor private: two.

(12) Chilean presidential elections in the year 2013, my children’s votes in the first round, with 100 percent reporting:

Michelle Bachelet: two

Marcel Claude: zero

Marco Enríquez-Ominami: zero

Tomás Jocelyn-Holt: zero

Ricardo Israel: one

Evelyn Matthei: one

Roxana Miranda: one

Franco Parisi: zero

Alfredo Sfeir: one

null votes: zero

blank votes: zero

(13) My children’s votes in the second round: three for Bachelet, one for Matthei, one drew a dick on the ballot, and one daughter didn’t vote.

(14) Children of mine who have spent more than two consecutive nights in jail: zero.

(15) Children of mine dependent on drugs: five. Fluoxetine: two. Clonazepam: two. Lithium: one. Children of mine with flat feet: 100 percent. Children of mine with flat feet who refused to use insoles: two. Children of mine operated on for appendicitis: three.

(16) Five of my children are myopic and four of those also suffer from astigmatism.

(17) Of my five children with vision problems, two wanted surgery but couldn’t afford it. Three use glasses, two prefer contacts. Of the three who wear glasses, two have thick rectangular frames. With the other one, it’s no use: He has round frames, even though he knows people with round faces should wear square or rectangular frames.

(18) In general, when I have them all over for lunch, two of my children talk about politics and two about soccer. The oldest tends to relate his interminable amorous entanglements, and the other remains in absolute silence, just like when he was a boy, always looking at his plate as if he were rigorously analyzing the food.

(19) Children of mine who sometimes ask me for loans to buy medicine: two. To go to the track: one. To pay debts: two.

(20) Children of mine for whom I’d give my life: at least three.

(21) Children of mine who were planned: four.

(22) Children of mine who, in times of distress, tell me their problems: three. Children of mine to whom, in times of distress, I tell my problems: two.

(23) Children of mine who will be present at my funeral: six.

(24) Children of mine who will spit on my grave: one.

(25) Children of mine who have children: zero.

A) None

B) Any

C) All

D) 21

E) 25

V. READING COMPREHENSION

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Next you will read three texts, each of them followed by questions or problems based on their content. Each question has five possible answers. Mark the one that you think is most appropriate.

TEXT #1

After so many study guides, so many practice and proficiency and achievement tests, it would have been impossible for us not to learn something, but we forgot everything almost right away and, I’m afraid, for good. The thing that we did learn, and to perfection — the thing we would remember for the rest of our lives — was how to cheat on tests. Here I could easily ad-lib an homage to the cheat sheet, all the test material reproduced in tiny but legible script on a minuscule bus ticket. But all that superb workmanship would have been worthless if we hadn’t also had the necessary skill and audacity when the crucial moment came: the instant the teacher lowered his guard and the ten or twenty golden seconds began.

At our school in particular, which in theory was the strictest in Chile, it turned out that cheating was fairly easy, since many of the tests were multiple choice. We still had years to go before we’d take the Academic Aptitude Test and apply to university, but our teachers wanted to familiarize us right away with multiple-choice exercises, and although they designed up to four different versions of every test, we always found a way to pass information around. We didn’t have to write anything or form opinions or develop any ideas of our own; all we had to do was play the game and guess the trick. Of course we studied, sometimes a lot, but it was never enough. I guess the idea was to lower our morale. Even if we did nothing but study, we knew there would always be two or three impossible questions. We didn’t complain. We got the message: Cheating was just part of the deal.

I think that, thanks to our cheating, we were able to let go of some of our individualism and become a community. It’s sad to put it this way, but cheating gave us a sense of solidarity. Every once in a while we suffered from guilt, from the feeling that we were frauds — especially when we looked ahead to the future — but in the end our indolence and defiance prevailed.

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