Here's a random school story I've never told but I still remember it vividly.

First grade. Today's lesson: body parts. So we all got drawings of a humanoid monster. The teacher would then tell us which body part to colour the appropriate colour. So "colour the arms blue", for example.

This wasn't exactly challenging stuff for a first grader but who knows, many some of my slower schoolmates found it a fun challenge.

But the reason this particular lesson has been so burned into my memory is because of the chest/stomach distinction. We had to colour the chest one colour (let's say green) and the stomach another colour (let's say red).

I didn't know the difference. Where does the chest end and the stomach begin? This confusion was voiced by several classmates and the teacher tried in vain to explain. "The chest is the upper part" and she'd point to her tits, basically) and the stomach is the lower part (and she'd point from above her waist to below her tits).

Nobody was getting it but after many questions on the subject, we just did our best. Nobody is going to flunk first grade over this, after all.

So yeah, I coloured it in as best as I could, having to mark a totally arbitrary point on this monster to delineate the chest from the stomach.

This lesson was memorable for two reasons. The first is that it was vaguely sexual. There's this attractive young teacher (at least to my mind) up there in front of the class instructing us to look at her tits. Now, I was in the first grade, I wasn't getting a boner or anything, but I knew there was something sexual about this.

But even more earth-shattering is that it revealed to me the farcical nature of scientific classification. This exact principle is explored in Taoism. Where does the hand end and the arm begin? It doesn't. It's arbitrary. Everything is as one. And you can extend this to everything. Where do I end and the universe begins? It doesn't. It's all one thing.

So an important lesson. Really made you think. It's too bad there weren't more lessons like this. I mean, yes, obviously this body part colouring project wasn't intended to make you think about these philosophical ideas but that was the result.

New warnings on the forum, I see. They made you agree to new user terms for one thing. But now at the bottom it also says:

By posting, you confirm that you have read and agree to the board's usage terms.
Any information provided in this form will be posted publicly on this message board.

If you have to be told that any message you post on a forum will be posted on the forum, you're kind of a dumbass. But whatever.

Whoa. When you try to post, you also get an ominious warning. You have to tick a bunch of boxes. Tthese are truly enlightened times that we live in.