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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When Sedaris and his sister go to the gun range, what does he learn about for the first time?
(a) Trigger locks.
(b) Gun purses.
(c) Gun hoarders.
(d) Gun safes.

2. In "Unbuttoned," what question does Lou ask his children?
(a) Whether he is real to them.
(b) Whether they miss their mother.
(c) Whether he is going to die.
(d) Whether they forgive him.

3. In "Unbuttoned," what does Sedaris notice on the floor of his father's house?
(a) A dead mouse.
(b) A pool of blood.
(c) Feces.
(d) A cat skeleton.

4. What does the Blue Mountain School District give its students to fight off an armed gunman?
(a) Pepper spray.
(b) Paint guns.
(c) Rocks.
(d) Whistles.

5. In "Bruised," what word does Sedaris keep repeating as he tries to fend off Olivier's advances?
(a) Bruise.
(b) Grandmother.
(c) Unhappy.
(d) Grown-up.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Hugh and Sedaris's house on Emerald Isle called?

2. In "Themes and Variations," who helps Sedaris choose a person to give money to at the public library?

3. In "Father Time," what does Sedaris say he was primarily interested in when he was Austen's and Harrison's age?

4. In "Themes and Variations," how does Sedaris meet Mary?

5. In "Themes and Variations," what two topics does Sedaris note seem to overlap in many jokes?

Short Essay Questions

1. In "Father Time," what does Sedaris tell Harrison and Austen about whom they should try to be more like, and why?

2. In "Unbuttoned," what irony does Sedaris recognize when Gretchen asks him to write Lou's obituary?

3. In "Active Shooter," what is the rhetorical purpose of the anecdote about Lisa believing a story she read in The Onion?

4. In "Highfalutin," how does Sedaris describe Amy's writing and acting?

5. In "Highfalutin," what two things does Amy do while she and Sedaris are shopping that he finds funny but also mortifying?

6. In "A Speech to the Graduates," how does Sedaris describe his own college experience?

7. In "Bruised," what "secret" does Sedaris believe Olivier has discovered, and why does he guess that Olivier is struggling to accept his new knowledge?

8. In "Father Time," how does Sedaris's description of Mayview connect the essay's motif of the inevitable march of time with his concerns about fatherhood?

9. In "Father Time," how does Sedaris contrast his attentiveness to his father with that of his siblings?

10. In "Bruised," what anecdote does Sedaris tell about a neighbor woman he knew when he was a child?

(see the answer keys)

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