The Rulers

Following the first thwack we deduced that distance was limited primarily to unpredictable bursts of anger, arbitrary chastisement factors. The rule, all of its dozen commandments plus the extra uncalibrated ends - a fixed length, extended sufficiently to bruise well beyond its mere twelve inch reach. Wood or Perspex the fractions stung, minds began to compute escape in eighths and sixteenths, we understood that the rod, the yardstick, probably the world, had been measured to the umpteenth by sadistic inchworms.