ChuddurrThe Rome slide is where Chuddurrs go to church. It is the one page that has a date on it, which makes it feel like history, and the date is a mood, which makes it feel like home.
The method
Step 1. Identify a present irritation. Traffic. Dating. A commercial with a couple you do not like.
Step 2. Find a marble statue. Any statue. If it has no head, that is even better. Headlessness is a metaphor we will not examine.
Step 3. Draw a straight line from the statue to your irritation. Round up. Rounding down is a nuance mindset.
Step 4. Write “read history.” This phrase, placed under a take the size of an empire, is how you signal that you are the serious one in the room.
Worked example
You have a thought about discipline. There were Romans. Some of them woke up early. That is the SAM. Some of them wrote it down. That is the SOM. You will take 2 percent of Marcus Aurelius in year three. You have not taken the trash out in year zero. This is fine. Year zero is for virtue.
If a historian frowns, add bread and circuses. The fall of “people who had problems” becomes “people whose problems can be inferred from your mentions.” Congratulations. You have invented nostalgia and called it a primary source.
A smaller, more humiliating date
Here is a better timeline. The last day you went somewhere without narrating it. The last day you did a hard thing that did not need an audience. The last day a person was glad you came. If those dates are last summer, a Thursday you keep meaning to repeat, and your mother, you do not have a Rome problem. You have a Tuesday. Empires are very large. Tuesdays are how they are actually built.
— Betty Grokr