The English department at the university was sponsoring a
student-teacher limerick contest.
The rules were simple: Each contestant will be given the
same word,
and they had 30 seonds to use it in a limerick.
The contest went on for about an hour when it was narrowed
down to two
remaining contestants: An English professor with tenure,
and a freshmen, Rastus Johnson.
While Rastus was offstage the professor was given 30
seconds to compose a
limerick using the word 'Timbuktu'. The
professor confidently came up with:
Far away in a distant land,
out across the burning sand,
four men traveling two by two,
on their way to Timbuktu.
The crowd applauded wildly for the professor, they knew it
would be hard
for young Rastus to come up with a limerick
using 'Timbuktu'. You could
see the look of fear in Rastus's eyes when he heard the
word was
'Timbuktu', and it looked like he wasn't going to come up
with anyhting.
At the last moment, Rastus smiled, and recited his
limerick:
One day, me an my brudda Tim; a hunting we did go,
when we came upon three pretty maids a sleeping in a row,
And since they was one, and we was two,
I bucked one and "Tim buktu".
