Man's testament to extreme paranoia

That's what I'm calling the Diefenbunker, an underground bunker (natch) built to hide mucky-mucks and government types during the cold war. I went there on a field trip with Elliott's class yesterday. The place looked like a cross between the fakey looking NASA base on "I Dream Of Jeannie" and the bridge of the Enterprise on the original series of Star Trek. There are two reasons why I made the paranoia crack:

1) There was this escape hatch reminiscent of something out of Coyote and Roadrunner where you step into a hatch, release a pile of rocks which creates a vaccuum that breaks a skylight and then you clamour up the rocks to get out. Like the coyote's plans, needlessly complicated and entirely bizarre.

2) Outside the computer room there were a bunch of tools. To fix the hilariously huge equipment? Heck no, to destroy the equipment in case of infiltration. I can understand a facility like this in the States but here in Canada? I told you. Paranoid.

And the field trip itself? Not as much fun as I'd envisioned. There was this one kid (I'm talking to you Ramy), who after the 40th time telling him to stay with the group and for God's sake don't touch the displays, I hauled off and hit... Elliott. Smacked him right upside the head, poor kid. I apologised up and down and told him that I loved him and explained that even in my highly stressed out state I still knew that hitting a stranger's child is assault but smacking your own is discipline. And I needed a release. Any port in a storm. Or head. And it actually felt good. I'd do it again. The smacking, not the field trip, that is.

kxx