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{\*\generator Msftedit 5.41.21.2509;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sa200\sl276\slmult1\lang9\f0\fs22 It wasn't until the fourth grade that my innocence was dented, and the actual realities and consequences of my dream-like world came into focus. I had been home-schooled my entire life, and as a result of this, lived in a strangely disconnected reality from that of my neighbors. I was a rather precocious child, and usually finished a satisfactory amount of schoolwork for the day before noon. This gave me a precious two hours and forty-odd minutes to venture into the neighborhood before the elementary school directly behind my house released its horde, with blinking school zone lights and crossing guards invading my dominion. My sister and I would sometimes eat our lunch in the woods directly adjacent to the school's playground, hidden in the bushes munching tuna croissants and silently observing recess with an almost scientific fascination. For a time, we held little interest in actually participating in the adventures of the screaming horde, content to note the eccentricities of "Government School" life. But I held a deeper interest in the workings of public school than my sister, and eventually became restless in my role as a passive observer. I eventually made up my mind that without diving into this world, this ocean of new faces and voices, that I would never really understand what made me different. \par
After the dismissal bell rang at two-forty, and the parents rolled their laboriously slow carousel of vans around the driveway, the YMCA after-school program began. A practice intended to discourage latchkey kids and unsupervised shenanigans, it instead became my laboratory. I began walking to the playground after school and joining in with the after-school students, without even an eyebrow being raised by the underpaid teens tasked with keeping us from murdering each other. I made friends quickly, finding it easy to replicate the behavior I'd previously observed from the bushes. After a month or two of spending every afternoon at the playground, I had gathered a small group of friends who shared my strange combination of blissful ignorance and calculating subversion. My life had reached a new stage of development, and I was content.\par
That is, until Dylan.\par
Dylan Vandore was a wild-eyed boy who I'd noticed quietly watching me from the corners of the playground. I didn't give him much thought, until a few months into my playground career. He slowly approached me one crisp October afternoon, a sort of fire playing in his eyes. He spoke sneeringly, with a sort of disdain even my fourth-grade self found incredible.\par
"You're not from here."\par
"Aren't I?"\par
"No. You don't even go to school here. I don't see you at lunch. You don't belong here."\par
"So? I'm home-schooled."\par
"I'll bet your parents can't afford to send you here. You're never going to get a job, you know. You'll probably live in your mom's basement."\par
I shrugged and walked away, feeling a fraction of my security in my surroundings fade. I confided in my friends, particularly Rory McAllister. Rory had moved to Austin from Alaska, and his parents were divorced. He was also the only boy on the playground with a CD player. He had come to my house a few times to play with legos, and had confided in me that humans actually came from monkeys and that there was no God. This was quite a bombshell for me, having been raised in a moderate evangelical household. I wasn't quite sure I believed him, but I decided he was smarter than me in some way I hadn't quite grasped yet. Rory was probably the most like me out of all the kids I associated with, having the same talent at sliding into social situations that didn't quite fit us, while always keeping a bit more awareness than the rest on the back burner. We didn't talk much, but we always knew what the score was, I guess. I told him about Dylan and what he'd said, and Rory explained to me that Dylan was always bothering the rest of the girls in their class. He would chase them around the playground during recess, making wild grunts and trying to catch them so he could kiss them. Only one girl had kissed him back, Sara, and she was quickly sent to an alternative school. As he related his stories about Dylan's reign of terror over the playground, the two of us quickly formulated a plan to stop the insanity. Recruiting a few of our additional friends, we formed the first chapter of the NDC - The No Dylan Club. We claimed a big wooden box made of lattice at the center of the playground as our clubhouse, and began scheming Dylan's demise.\par
It took us a few weeks to make any significant headway. The first few days were devoted entirely to deciding our club titles, the rules, and our sacred club anthem. I had a bit of musical knack by that point, so I spent a few sleepless nights with pen in hand and ended up with my magnum opus.\par
\i Long live the NDC, the greatest club on Earth\par
Long live the NDC, oh Dylan is a jerk\par
He makes us mad and makes us glad that we're the NDC\par
Long live the NDC.\par
\i0 Sleepless nights indeed. I sang it for Rory once and he was ecstatic. After a few more attempts at harmonizing, it was burned into our brains. Any attempt at adding new lyrics or swapping lines by our fellow club members was instantly dismissed. It was \i ours\i0 .\par
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