I rode the bus this morning and for some reason remembered this time in 3rd grade where the teacher, Mrs Kawecki, handed out a packet of mimeographed pages, about 20 pages long, that contained detailed instructions for a bunch of crazy exercises. The teacher said it was very important to follow the directions for this packet and that the first direction was to read the exercises first, the whole way through.
Of course, every kid began to do the exercises right away. I was too lazy to start, so I started browsing through the packet, curious to see if the exercises on page 20 were as bizarre as the ones on page 1. When I got to the end of the packet, there was a page with the instructions: "Do not do any of the exercises. hand the blank pages back to your teacher" I did that and sat there while the rest of the class enthusiastically completed the exercises like draw 20 ears of corn on one page and draw a large circle with 45 smaller circles inside it, write the alphabet with one a, two Bs, three Cs, etc.
When they got done, I was singled out as the only person who followed the directions. I felt some pride at this even though it was purely by accident that I read to the end of the packet. I can't think of an exercise that could be better at teaching the class that our work was meaningless, that our ability to draw nice looking ears of corn was meaningless in comparison to our ability to follow directions automatically and completely.
5:31:32 PM 
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