Sorry about that formatting, guys: I had thought that double spacing worked--but it comes out as a nice puzzle all run together that way. And Barbara, your story reminds me of the time Berkeley High's then-very-popular principal Tom Parker started to address an all-school assembly and after every phrase he was interrupted by applause. I don't think he ever got through his second sentence.
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And that reminds me of another Berkeley High assembly story: Imagine this, the entire student body called together to listen to the names of dozens of winners of math contests read, most of them sitting on folding chairs on stage (many of their parents in the audience), standing when their names were called. This was the entire assembly, except for the audience response: after the first dozen or so names, a soft one-word chant started up and spread throughout the auditorium. It remained very soft, but with a couple thousand voices chanting it in unison it grew in intensity from kind of a heartbeat sound, more felt than heard, to a clear word. A n award would be announced, a winner named, and the chant Nerd! would follow. This went on for about 30 minutes, with teachers and student supervisors and administrators trying to stop it, but finally accepting the inevitable. That was the first and last math awards assembly, but the teacher who set it up ten years later spent a painful two years trying to be principal.

--seed