...Subterraneans...

It was a large sparse room

with thick benches built into its

wood paneled walls, and there 

above our heads was a single

un-shaded light bulb of

phenomenal wattage.

Beyond the bulb, 

and far above us,

continuous crashing crescendos 

rained down from origins

that seemed miles and miles away, 

and yet sustained their 

tremendous volume

with an abrasive oppression 

that consistently crushed 

normal motor-neuron functions

into numbed submission.

This was Hell,

and my mother 

had placed me here.

Oh, and I was not alone.

Other mothers had placed

their offspring here as well.

There was you, 

and there was them.

You felt your mother 

had dropped you off

into some sort of Darwinian

survival-of-the-fittest 

laboratory test.

The lab test administrator

was this harsh old woman 

with scowling eyes,

who was absolutely impervious

to your lamentations.

She was the designated baby-sitter

assigned to the downstairs 

child-care room of the 

local bowling alley.

During this period of my youth,

my mother was a member 

   of a bowling league.

As luck would have it,

she, and many other bowling mothers,

could escape the cost of a baby sitter

by simply bringing their children along

and shunting them

down a narrow flight 

of concrete stairs, and into 

the wood paneled room at their end.

There was very little if anything in this room.

A small assortment of worn out toys

had to meet a ration of 

one to every four kids.

Oh, and the baby-sitter was 

not concerned with equity.

She was only there to see to it

that battles for toys 

did not become lethal. Well, 

didn't draw blood anyway.

Of course this wasn't all simple lack

of forethought and consideration.

The room was a giant wooden petri dish.

It was applied Darwinism

designed to instill Machiavellian insight.

We weren't supposed to get along.

Indeed, this was all 

preparation for future existence

within the world of grown-ups.

Cliques were established. 

Alliances made.

Political cut and thrust mastered.

The crashing bowling balls and pins

above our heads screamed,

"Annihilate! Annihilate! Annihilate!"

This was to be our anthem;

absorbed in preparation 

for the corporate world.

It was supposed to have been

survival of the fittest

but unfortunately the test had a flaw 

in that the unfit survived as well;

I was to be one of them.

Ó97 Jack David Hubbell