The Bomb
"I've got a bomb," said the boy.
We stood in a loose group around him in the playground – which at playtime was the whole world. The school buildings were visible at the perimeter but could be ignored as background features: clouds or distant mountains. Right here and now we were all the protagonists of our own stories, our games more real than adults could imagine.
And yet we did know the difference. It was just a game but the most important thing of all was that no-one should ever mention this fact. Down on the tarmac that was the number one rule.
Out here I'd landed a spacecraft on the sun, been captured by golden eagles and chased by the bionic man. We were all perfectly capable of carrying two worlds in our heads simultaneously without any cognitive dissonance.
"I've got a bomb."
The boy unclenched his fingers. Nestled there in his palm was a rounded green cylinder, one end hemispherical, the other nozzle-like. Way at the back of my head I identified it as a used soda CO₂ charger cylinder but in the playtime world it was quite clearly a bomb.
The boy said he was going to blow up the school. Even in the fantasy world this seemed a bit extreme, but I understood. The boy concerned was always in trouble with the teachers so it was to be expected that he'd want to remove the source of his problems. And – even though I would never have dared say this out loud – it was only a game.
Later. We were in assembly and being lectured by the deputy-head about the irresponsibility of the boy's claims. Somehow news of the bomb had got back to the teachers and we were being told to never ever say anything like that again. It seemed that even some games were out of bounds.
But what troubled me most was the fact that the teachers knew about the bomb and were taking it seriously. This broke several of the unwritten rules of playground fantasy. It just felt wrong, like John Craven starting to talk about the dreams you'd had last night on Newsround...