I just read "Jack In the Box" for the first time, and it touched me so much I wept. Does anybody remember going out into the world for the first time? Has anyone led a sheltered life and the discovered the wonders of the world through culture shock. Culture shock in the very culture you have lived in your whole life? It happened to me in my teens. I was raised in a very strict religious school from Kindergarten through my freshman year of high School(the earth is only 4,000 years old because that's what the Bible says, God put dinosaur fossils in the ground to test our faith, etc.). My Sophomore year I transferred to a public school and was so scared and freaked out that i cried and threw up every morning on the walk to school. i had been with the same twenty classmates and the same 160 K-8 schoolmates for ten years and was going to the dreaded school of two thousand strangers and godless heathens. Somehow I let go of my fear and allowed my eyes, and countless doors of opportunity, to be opened. I shed my religion and my conservative mindset and am an immeasurable better person for it. Not that anyone here necessarily cares, but that is why "Jack In The Box" affected me so. I know how that young boy felt, and I was happy for him "dying" I cheered him on all the way at the end of the story in his rebirth.

Christ Loves You

I sort of get your point. I went to a private school from 3rd grade to graduation, and when I went to get a job during my senior year, it was such an eye opener. Suddenly, all these things I had heard that went on were happening. My new friends drank, smoked pot, etc. They weren't rebels, or criminals, really. They had just grown up in a place where those things were made available to them. It's still sort of hard on me, because on one hand, I was (ans still am, to a measure) very naive, but I can't help but be grateful that I wasn't brought up in that sort of environment. I didn't take a bad hit in high school, and as a result still see "things" in the dark. That did happen to one of my friends, though, and even though she doesn't do drugs now, it's still with her. Now, I still have friends who do a lot of stuff I don't do, and I have learned a lot of good and bad things about the world, but that hasn't affected me to the point where I abandoned my beliefs. I'm sorry your school was flawed in the way they taught. I believe in a young earth, but the "dinosaur fossils were put there to test our faith" is a very backwards thing to teach.We had a creationist viewpoint backed by scientific information at my school, and I'm very glad of that. All I can say is that your school was well-intentioned but misinformed. As for all that is to be had in the world, there is a lot of things under the sun, and some days I'm glad I know about them, and some days I'm not. Mostly, I'm glad that I had parents who cared enough about me to shelter me as a child, until I was old enough to make the right decisions, without that grade-school/junior high peer pressure. I was an odd little kid, and if I had been going to a public schools, there's a good chance I would have tried things "just to fit in", and regretted it later. I'm still offered those things, but I'm mature enough to pass it by, and know that my friends will still respect me for it.

Thanks for the feedback guys. It's nice to know that we are all accepting of each other and that there is room for everyone here in Ray Bradbury Fan Land.

I just finished reading Jack-in-the-box.
When I got to his delight of the afterlife I
laughed out loud. But then I wondered what would happen to Edwin when he actually met kids his age or tried to live in a dead world?