Ass + U + Me

First witnessed and endured the insensitivity and the starkness of red tape as I stepped into secondary school. At that moment, it seemed like the ‘natural flow’ to join the prefectorial board and bully everybody into immaterial straight lines, two-by-two. Fast forward 5 years, and can saw with absolutism that I regret wearing that puerile maroon vest and purple tie that made everyone in the board look like complete morons! If I could wind back the clock, don’t think I would change one speck though.

There were millions of absurdities attached to the board. Today, however, I am resolutely going to make ‘The Rules of Thumb’ the laughing stock.

We were told, during the orientation week itself that it was going to be hellish – dozens of paper work, sheets after sheets of things to read and memorized, a battalion of seniors to suck up to…the list goes on and on and on.

So, we were told, “We prefects live up to these of rules. It’s the most basic thing we have to know, and if you don’t know this during Q & A (question and answer session after weekly meeting) you’re a roast duck!”

I don’t remember quite well, mayhap there were 9 or maybe 10 clauses to this. But, only one mattered the most. After talking to a fellow ‘maroon monster’ over lunch a couple of days ago, found out that this one dumb rule of Rule Number 5. Initially what fascinated me was the fact that it was exquisitely original, with just the right hint of vulgarity and simplicity. I remember saying it over and over, just because it had a nice twang with it.
So, basically, I was baffled when I found the real version of it – in a paper back fiction!

“Aha, hold it. You assumed. You assumed” Crawford wrote assume on a legal pad and began to underline. “If you assume when I send you on a job, Starling, you can make an ass of u and me both”.

Basically, rule #5 was a modified replica, and it lost its lustre instantaneously when the source discovered.
“Never assume. When you assume you make and ass of you and me”

The catch is, I’m reading ‘Silence of the Lambs’ by Thomas Harris. That’s the book that revealed the truth about all this mumbo-jumbo crap our seniors fed us. How intriguingly morbid…