Thank you for taking the time to type this all out for everyone and me. Have a cookie! Now, I have some questions, though they aren't about OO specifically.

1. How would you control explosive growth with this? I could sneeze and come up with a new list of items that I would like to randomize. Do I just keep adding new things to the top under RandThing and maybe keeping a list in a comment? The current set up looks a bit bulky for all of the randomizing I would be doing with this. Below are two lists I came up with while sitting here, and I may actually use them some day.

   package RandWritingImplement;
   
   use parent -norequire, 'RandThing';
   
   
   sub new {
       my ($class) = @_;
       my @values = qw(pencil pen marker crayon chalk);
   
       return $class->SUPER::new (@values);
   }
   
   package RandWritingSurface;
   
   use parent -norequire, 'RandThing';
   
   
   sub new {
       my ($class) = @_;
       my @values = qw(paper parchment slate hide stone);
   
       return $class->SUPER::new (@values);
   }
   [download]

2. How would RandThing be modified to accept not only arrays but also hashes? There are times where the list comes from a single hash key, the list could be the hash keys, or all of the arrays in the hash jumbled into one large list. Below is a subroutine I wrote which does it all for me, except that it doesn't take direct input.

   sub _random {
     my ($list,$key) = @_;
     my @random_array;
     if (ref($list) eq "HASH") {
       if ($list->{$key}) {
         @random_array = @{$list->{$key}};
       }
       elsif ($key eq 'keys') {
         @random_array = (keys %{$list});
       }
       elsif ($key eq 'all') {
         @random_array = map(@{$list->{$_}},keys %{$list});
       }
       else {
         die q(You need to select a key from the hash, "all" keys, or jus
   +t "keys".);
       }
     }
     elsif (ref($list) eq "ARRAY") {
       @random_array = @{$list};
     }
     else {
       die q(What are you doing? You didn't enter a hash or an array.);
     }
     return $random_array[rand @random_array];
   }
   [download]

These are two issues that I don't see an answer for in the current set up. OO does sound appealing, however, it appears to be very bulky for even something as simple as randomizing a lot of lists.