do you remember back in fourth grade when some idiot made the fatal error of saying "three hundred and twelve" instead of "three hundred twelve"? and of course the teacher heard him say the word, so she whipped around in her seat to face him, eyes flashing with the righteous anger of a scorned deity. she slowly rose up from her chair like scylla about to devour odysseus, savoring the terror on his face before snapping her jaws shut around his neck. she took long strides across the room to the whiteboard in the corner and rapped it with her knuckles three times, causing the slouching students to jolt upwards and pay attention for once in their lives. the teacher uncapped a blood-red expo marker and wrote the number "312" on the board. "three hundred twelve," she said, being careful to enunciate every consonant. "this number is three hundred twelve." she lunged across the board to where the three was placed and aggressively jabbed at the space between that number and the two, leaving a bright red mark. “and this”, she continued. “this number right here. THIS IS THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE.” and as the students stared at the board numbly like shell-shocked war veterans, you realized with jarring certainty that everyone in this room was soon to shuffle off the mortal coil. but instead of doing anything with your pathetic seventy-or-so-year existence, you were stuck in a room learning the difference between three hundred twelve and three hundred and twelve. why did it matter? why did anything matter? something something vaguely philosophical questions! i was sleep deprived when i wrote this
