[ WP ] When everyone turns 18 , they receive a pet which is figurative of their personality . You 're the first person to receive a dragon ...

As we learned in class, partners have always been. When you turn 18, give or take a few days, your partner finds you somehow. In the past, your partner meant everything - it decided your social class, your profession, bascially your whole life. There were all sorts of rituals and myths about the selection process, princes were exiled if they did n't draw a certain partner, wars over which species was better, carnivore/herbivore apartheid, that sort of thing. 
 
 Thank heaven we're not in those days, right? I mean, it's still kind of a big deal, but they're mostly pets these days. Horses are n't allowed on the highway, we do n't need wolves to help hunt our meat - we just buy it at the supermarket, and birds are way slower than text messages. Well, science marches on, and people have been working on the mysteries around the selection process. We still do n't know where they come from yet, but we do know two things: people are always happy with the partner they get eventually, and partners seem to match certain characteristics of people. Some people think a mouse is lame and are disappointed at first, but they come to see it as a loving and low-maintenance option in time. 
 
 Oh, the SPPT. For about 100 years most countries have kept track of partners, there's some UN group that stores the records, and the eggheads try to come up with tests that predict the partner a person will end up with so they can prepare for it. The Standardized Partner Prediction Test ( SPPT for short, but everyone calls it the `` spit'' ) is the best, it's been around for decades but they update it constantly. In your junior year in high school, or earlier, if you are older, you've got ta sit down for a week and fill out all these bubbles. They feed it into a machine, and a while later you get a list with the top 10 most likely partners it thinks you're gon na get. With so many data points, it's never wrong, in fact I've never known anyone that got a partner that was n't in the top 3. Supposedly about 200 people a year get a partner outside the top 5, they have to do tons of extra testing to see what the test missed so it can be better next year. We all dread that'cuz that means you probably have to spend all summer filling out tests, super lame. 
 
 Most kids take the spit really seriously. The instructions say to just answer honestly, but there are guides out there on the net that supposedly tell you what answers get certain partners. Since the spit is never wrong, some kids think if they choose certain answers on the test it will guarantee them a certain partner they want. It obviously does n't work, or everyone would be getting tigers and eagles and stuff, and we had a whole unit last year in math class over how the spit is correlation not causation, but rumors die hard in school ya know? 
 
 So, me. I've always had a bit of an independent streak. I mean, I do n't totally slack off, but I'm not above pulling pranks in class. Class clown, if you will. Partners never really meant a lot to me, so I decided to just pick crazy answers instead, just to screw with the spit. It was pretty funny seeing people freak out over the spit, losing sleep, writing cheats on their arms and stuff. I bubbled weird answers the whole week, it was actually pretty boring. Most people were going to get normal things for their top picks anyways... I was so excited about what nonsense the spit was going to pick for me, maybe a platypus, or something totally random like a whale. Would n't that be hilarious? 
 ( part 1/2, continued in reply )
