It’s the Saturday Scruples.
1. You dream that friends die in a plane crash. The next day they announce a trip to Greece. Do you mention your dream? Of course I do. I enjoy razzing my friends. And if I really had the wiggins about it, I’d have a moral obligation to pass the word on.
2. Your spouse offers to let you have an affair if s/he can. Do you accept the offer? Must … suspend … disbelief … Um, probably not. I suspect such things are far better (and easier) contemplated in fantasy than in real life. Beside which, having been struck blind, deaf and mute by that offer, I probably wouldn’t find many prospects.
3. You’re a collage teacher. one of your students plagiarized an essay and should fail the course. She’s from a disadvantaged minority. Do you make an exception? Absolutely not. I mean, what would I be actually teaching by doing so?
Remember that story Isaac Asimov told about the teacher who sent him a story one of her students had turned in for a creative writing assignment? She thought it was too good for him to have written, and wanted Dr. A to look it over. It was a verbatim transcription of his “Galley Slave.”