Part XX - The Sandbox

Soon those steps you have learned to take bring you to new and more complicated experiences. You have paid the toll on the road to these new horizons by the scars you bear and the disconnections yours have tied you to. There are ways of perception that you have been given and fitted to you are plush blinders that have equipped you with that necessary tunnel vision that your particular section of society needs to have in order to stay uninspired. Your uniform and number have been issued and your similarity to the flock grants you membership to the second circle; that extension from your kin to the larger cluster of the tribe.

You have mastered sandbox etiquette and the skills you are mastering bring those gifted moments when you learn to share your pile and self. You have hit and been hit, you have hurt and been hurt, you have been rejected and you have turned your back on yesterday's friend. You have been chased from your castles in the sand by that big happy dog that licks your face because of all the tastes that have been left on it. Your mother has saved you on numerous occasions although in fact there was no danger in most, but perception has created your reality and mother seldom reasoned, she only reacted. You have fallen and grandmother has swept you up and startled you into tears that the scrape was not capable of giving you. Fears are implanted and their vines are free to entwine themselves throughout your mind.

The days go by and from sand to steel you move. The swings and bars bestow on you strength and flexibility to push your youthful endurance even harder. Balls for throwing, kicking and catching enhance your agility and coordination. Your body is like a piston full of moving from the fuel of wonderment and enchantment. The play ground is your empire, and all in it, from that hole near the sidewalk to that little girl with the constant flow from her nostrils, bleed into you the colours of boundless stories, mysteries and deluded facts. You sit with your comrades and discuss the clouds, sticks and the function of the bathroom. You laugh instantly and the only match for it is the spontaneity of your tears.

These binding times are essential to your physicality and the outcome of your future health. To learn to move the apparatus that your consciousness has been placed into is vital for the expansion of your future awareness. The interaction with your peers and theirs, brings you a sense of self in this realm that you have come to. Time is playing you constantly and your internal clock has been strictly wound. You are typical in your daily routines and when boredom of the normal pounds upon you, the nap is your quick relief. You are guided by the blueprint of what is considered normal although the tiny deviations in time will make you more like your family and slightly different than the tribe.

You soon will be integrated into the system of applied education, so you are being taught like a parrot to count and to follow the line of the alphabet. You recite like an angel amongst the rest in your herd and the praise that you are given is all that really matters. You will be entrenched into the pipe like other beads before you, as the flow moves slowly through the process of trimming off those shades of individuality. Fitting in is the virtue, any expression other than what is allowed for instantly separates you from the rest. Don't worry though, there is a team of cleaners that will lovingly help you to readjust yourself to the mainstream. Flow, my dear, within the similarity, and if it hurts, learn to keep it to yourself.