It's not entirely often that an eye-opening experience happens with the happenstance appearance of a canid. In fact, one might even say that such an event should not occur with any regularity. One would probably be wrong, though; an animal wandering into a classroom (or any other location where distractions should be kept to a minimum) is sometimes a welcome change of pace, supposing the animal in question meets a few qualifications -- you know, the usual: a lack of rabidness, a lack of disease, a lack of extreme odors; nothing unusual here.
When this subject comes up, thoughts often turn towards the television, and with good reason. A similar incident is portrayed in the episode "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song" of the long-lived series, The Simpsons -- and, as it turns out, with an accuracy that can come only with experience. Youngster Bart brought his pet pooch, Santa's Little Helper, to Springfield Elementary as an item for chlidhood favorite, Show-and-Tell. When Bart reveals the dog, there is an audible gasp across the classroom, before a sort of sponsored pandemonium breaks loose, and Bart's classmates -- and teacher -- begin praising the dog with an utter amazement.
In a strange twist of events, a very similar incident occurred during my Humanities course on Monday. During a discussion on Rawl's theory of justice, a strange, black dog wandered into the classroom, breeding excitement at every turn. It walked around the classroom, and the students were practically in some sort of shock: a dog had come into class during a discussion on justice. The odds, it seems, were phenomenal. In at least one universe, a human had just wandered into a classroom full of dogs, which evokes incredulous stares, despite a logical possibility of such.
What is it that brought down the walls of attention in the class? The obvious answer, of course, is a dog. Not much more can be said with any assuredness, other than the fact that even college students are easily distracted. Though, if the only thing required to distract a college student is a wayfaring dog, there are some serious issues that should eventually be contended with.
And, for once, fact really did mirror fiction, in some strange, twisted sense of the words.