Alpha delta bravo

My translation department students are having their monthy tests. As usual with the majority of the Chinese tests multiple choice is the favorite. I have to grade 50+50 papers with tons of questions and boringly limited room for imagination, only four letters of the alphabet thrown about and an answersheet to consult... The mind goes dull after paper number 3. Mistakes are of course avoidable - with great strain - but with the eyes jumping from the answer sheet to the students' papers and back it is such an excruciating job.

I wish somebody were here to read the answers to me so that I at least didn't have to look away from the test paper.... Eureka! I am my own reader! Here we go - record the answers to the computer's hard drive and play them as we check the papers!

But after a while it's getting dull again and I have doubts as to whether it was a "D" or a "B" just now, and the recording goes on, and I lose the tempo... I gotta do something or else...

The human genius did not stand by leisurely, and technically speaking for any cunning nut we can invent a big screw with a tricky threading :) What people do in such situations so as not to confuse short sound-waves? Right! Military phonetic alphabet! And a couple of minutes later from my open window and into the warm subtropical evening there drifted short Morse-code-like sentences "bravo - delta - delta - alpha - bravo - charlie...". The work went faster and my mind had some room for unrelated thoughts, - something like what if someone overhears me, and draws a long-fetched conclusion of me sending a coded message out. Darn! And I am just checking papers.

'Bravo-charlie-alpha-delta..." streamed away for about an hour. I was just checking the tests...