'There's something fishy going on here,' she hissed through clenched teeth to the colleague beside her who kept tapping his feet.
She assumed from a distance that her snarl looked like a smile. Last week she'd seen her dentist; it was for the first time in a while. She had feared periodontitis (or a filling at least), as her jaw and ears had been aching and her teeth felt sensitive. Instead, he told her not to grind and clench so hard. He suggested yoga, hot baths or, if they failed, a tooth-guard. Then, he'd flossed her and polished her, and, despite her molars wearing down, her incisors remained incisive; she had the sharpest incisors in town.
Her colleague turned towards her. He shook his head to show he hadn't heard. 'Fishy', she enunciated rather loudly; as a consequence of uttering the word, two professors from Humanities who sat in front of her suddenly turned. As the newly-graduated strode and tottered, swaggered and swayed across the stage, the academics sat blank-faced, straight-laced. In their gowns and their mortar boards, and a few post-graduate caps, they slumped and slouched their shoulders, giving intermittent claps.
'I say, there's something fishy here, something fishy going on. I failed her. Yes, her just gone, the portly, long-haired, mousey one. Yes that one there, in the red stiletto shoes. I failed her, I am certain, yet they've just awarded her 2:2.'
The Dean had reached the end of his list; he was no longer reading names. Her colleague turned to her and said, 'yes, I observed the one with the shoes that are red. But if you failed her, then how come she passed?' As an aside: 'So, the Dean has finally finished. Thank God: at last.'
'Well, I'm damned if I know, but I guess it's a lark. You know the slang for a brilliant student? The word is 'shark'.'
'Of course I know that definition, I am Head of Linguistics. Please forgive me for being pedantic or somewhat soliloquistic. But, I quote from the OED (I'll omit the etymology): 'shark n. Long-bodied, lateral-gilled, inferior-mouthed elasmobranch sea-fish, esp. if large and voracious; rapacious person, swindler'.'
'Well, that told me,' she whispered loudly, unintentionally baring her canines. Then she gave a sudden bark. 'Just remind me, will you, did God deign to let sharks onto Noah's ark?'
'Well, it wouldn't have been necessary. The shark, or course, can swim. Given the vessel's limited capacity, why let oceanic creatures in?'
'Silly me. So, from that one could deduce, that when God rained down his vengeance and his favourite verb was 'sluice', that he still quite liked the fish stock and with them he had a truce? And, again, from that it's possible, inevitable, to tentatively infer (excuse the split infinitive), that out of all of his creations he preferred those that were inferior.'
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