The world is pretty freaking boring when it's just pavement and the 5,000th time you've passed the same strip mall, gas station, and McDonald's. The same dirty snowbanks on either side of the same gray asphalt under the interminably gray winter sky.

And yet, somehow the children survived and thrived.

They learned to make up games, to entertain themselves, and to -- perish the thought -- talk to other human beings in their own family! /shudder/

Did they?

I hate to tell you, but a lot of them didn't thrive. Some of them didn't even survive. Some of them didn't have families that particularly want to talk to them. Or when they were spoken to, it wasn't exactly healthy.

Just because maybe you had a great childhood, doesn't mean everybody did.