A Special Kind of Hell: The Playground
I am not sure why as we grow older and try to remember the past often our thoughts drift to our youngest age. Perhaps it is our own psyche recognizing the importance in those formative years on how we came to know the world. Maybe it was the most interesting part of our lives. Perhaps it is a yearning for lost innocence. Whatever the reason I found myself today harkening back to memories of one of the most brutal locations of a young child’s life, the playground. For a young child the playground embodies liberation, freedom, friendship and hierarchy. It also is an arena where it is kill or be killed. It is a regulated pandemonium when adult supervision is minimized and like Lord of the Flies children express their dominance over the others. It can be in games, submission or actions of deprecation. I can still recall Todd Mueller or was it Bobby Andresen pinching my neck and forcing me to bow while they said “Bauer, bow to the emperor.” I learned early on that a key to s