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Frederick Roth's avatar

The most treasured object of childhood is my scout badge, I kept it all these years. It dates to the mid-80s before I emigrated to Australia with my mum. Scouts in the People's Republic of Poland were required to make an oath - which of course included the obligation to uphold socialism. So even that innocent memory is tainted. Regimes cannot leave children alone because indoctrination for ideologies is kind of a political reproduction.

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Josh Slocum's avatar

Holly's right. The feeling of dark was oppressive; unusually so. It felt like it felt as a kid watching Twilight Zone episodes that scared me. If I were a believer in the supernatural, I'd describe it as a psychic impingement of some sort; it was that kind of subjective experience.

Holly has done as well as a writer can to get this across, but believe me, you don't really get it because you haven't been there. Some of you will have visited similar places, I'm betting.

People are variously sensitive to this type of stimuli; Holly and I both are certainly over-sensitive, but typical of badly abused kids. I think, though, that even "normal" people would have felt some level of off-putting creepiness.

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