Back in the days of old there was a school assembly at my
high school. It got pretty rowdy and this bothered my
Latin teacher a great deal. When we came back from class he asked us to write a brief essay on "What is decorum?"
The results were certainly not what anyone expected. One of the papers, which were all done anonymously for some reason I don't recall, went something like this:
Decorum is the will of the insane majority. Anarchy and fire will be the answer. Explosions and doom are anarchy
Rather than tossing this away, or being angry as the student probably expected, this seemed to push the teacher into some sort of weird, surreal state of teacher enlightenment.
For the next two weeks my latin class consisted of coming to class, sitting down, and being subjected to the oddest bit of "teaching" I have ever encountered.
Are leaves decorum? Is war decorum? Is decorum god? Is driving a car decorum? Do dogs have decorum?
Everyday a fresh assault on us and another essay to write. If the universe was actually an underground comic I would probably have developed some strange super power as a result. Maybe the afterlife will turn out to be the Egyptian Land of the Dead and the riddle of the Sphinx will be that question and _I_ will cross over to the Western Lands.