When I started high school, some friends of mine told me that our school building had a tunnel system that could be accessed from some of the classrooms. When the campus was first constructed in the mid-1950’s, it included a nuclear fallout shelter; that’s what these tunnels were originally for. Calling them “tunnels” was generous, too, because they weren’t meant to accommodate the height of a person standing (I suppose the assumption was, if they were getting used, the folks inside would be huddled heads-to-knees while the bombs went off outside).
When I heard about the existence of these tunnels and saw the few grainy photographs my friends had taken during their time investigating them, I immediately wanted my own opportunity to explore. We all picked a day to stay after school and hoped that there wouldn’t be too many teachers around to thwart our efforts. Unfortunately we seemed to get caught during every attempt we made to poke around shelves and move potted plants in order to uncover access panels, and were continually shooed away. After a while we just gave up on the effort and moved on to other shenanigans.
I’ve never really forgotten about those tunnels and my desire to poke my head inside them, but like so many things that happened (or didn’t) around 9th grade I kind of made peace with the fact that I’d probably never see firsthand what was hidden down there beneath the floor. It was kind of like when I tried out for the fall play and was the only one of my friends who didn’t make the cut, or when my undiagnosed learning disabilities and complete lack of study skills finally caught up with me in math class, despite my aspirations of becoming a “game programmer” – I was forced to wrestle with the reality of what was and wasn’t possible for me to accomplish by my own skills and gained some sobering perspective on my limitations.