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 T is for Tape measure

“Gather near the fire, my children. The darkness closes in and it grows cold.”

“Tell us a story great-grandfather, a story from the way back.” 

“Very well… back then, long, long ago …before the times of much money, our people would take their art and hang it on their walls by themselves.”

“Straight, great-grandfather…. They would hang it straight?”

“That is so. Every painting, every print, every bas-relief we would hang on the wall absolutely parallel to the ground. It was always so in my family and in all the families of our village. Until, one day, that knowledge was lost.”

“How great-grandfather, how did it go?”

“The Straightening Man. He came from nowhere with his measure tape and his laser beam. Before long the Straightening Man hung all our pictures and all our prints, for by that time we had stopped buying bas-reliefs. Carefree we forgot the old ways until one day no one could remember how to hang a painting. 

“The knowledge had vanished from our family, our tribe and, I fear, from all the world.”