a DRAM is a micro-drama , conducted internally within an individual or a small tight group

Virtually everyone who casually asks for a wee dram of whiskey would be shocked and insulted if their host actually delivered upon their request.

If you filled a very tiny, baby-sized, teaspoon to the level top that would be a dram : about 1/8th of an ounce of liquor.

It thus delivers us a sharp history lesson : whiskey for a very long time was extremely scarce and extremely expensive.

Drinkers at their dram shops could only afford to drink - slowly ! - a tiny teaspoon every now and then.

Dram has had many meanings over the centuries : a small coin in ancient times, then used by pub owners for wet measure of alcohol and by doctors and druggists for dry measure of medicines. 

(DRAM, (D-RAM), a form of computer RAM, obviously, has no connection to the older term.)

I have extended, invented, an additional meaning for the ancient term : as a very small drama, a micro-drama.

A drama as far away as possible from the huge nation versus nation dramas usually found in Grand Opera.

Or is it ?

For my micro-dramas, DRAMs, occur mostly inside one person’s conscience, or inside the conscience of a small tightly knit group.

“Should I Go or Should I Stay ?” by the Clash would be a classic pop DRAM.

The construct would generally run along those lines : ‘should I (we) do X...or... should I (we) do Y’ ?

So one could well see a US president, as well as the inner circle around a US president, debating internally about what to do as the Russian freighter filled with atomic bombs steams towards Cuba.

Oops ! That story has been done.

But you see my point : the art form has the potential to tie something as small and as personal as the thoughts inside one’s head, with globe-altering events outside.

In my book ,the dying Dr Dawson has to daily decide whether to quit his quest and take up the quiet life so he can live long enough to have his young son really know him - or whether to plow on and stop penicillin being used solely as a weapon of war and private profit, to instead see abundant cheap natural (PD) penicillin available to all in need throughout the world...