Certain people feel that there is much to be gained in life from an ability to sit together in neat little rows of about ten — five rows side by side. To this end, they have built large walled buildings and therein train their children from an early age to resist all the temptations there are to rise up and go outside and play. Initially there is an adjustment period during which they do not unduly aggravate the young ones, but very soon they begin to test the children’s willpower with shrill chalk screams, cackling old ladies, and nasty men in square hats. If they can sit in these neat rows and learn to memorize facts for a period averaging 17 years, then upon passing a certain prescribed examination they are deemed to be graduates of the school itself and thereafter fit to be playground instructors, ministers of recreation, or revolutionaries. The entire education is not complete, however, unless they have passed the awful truth test. At some point during their endurance of the long training process, somewhere among history lessons, seminars on mathematics, and spelling bees, somewhere in the midst of all this the awful truth becomes visible to them for one searing second. If the child can maintain his or her composure when this happens and not rush from the room holding his or her head with both hands and screaming, the child will have passed the most important test there is, and shall then be considered a graduate of the school behind the school.