We had just moved house. The new house seemed to be identical to the old one. The neighbourhood seemed the same also. And indeed, we had exactly the same neighbours next door except that they had switched from being on the left to being on the right. The only change was the fact that we had brand new neighbours on the left. They seemed to spend most of their time in the back garden. One of the parents was black and the other was white. They each had children from previous relationships as well as their own. And there was a lot of them. Around 25, widely varying in skin tones and age. As I said already, they spent most of their time in the garden, playing, fighting, and looking over the fence into our garden. One day I woke up and looked out of my bedroom window to see that they had built some sort of structure at the end of their garden. I went down into my garden to get a better look. It was about 8 feet tall and 3 feet wide and appeared to be constructed of scaffolding and covered in sheet metal. It actually looked quite stylish. On the face of this structure they had placed lots of photographs all in neat vertical columns. I can't remember what the photos were of, I didn't really look. Then I turned away, and when I looked back, the face of the structure was covered in small screens displaying a series of random video images. One of the teenagers saw that I was looking and explained to me that it was an art installation. I didn't ask why they had decided to build it at the end of the garden where nobody would see it. After that me and all the neighbours kids my age became friends and spent a lot of time together. One of them told me about an operation their entire family was going to have done. It involved having a plastic tube (in a colour of your choice) inserted permanently around the intestinal area. I wasn't told what purpose this served and I didn't ask, but I still thought it was a fantastic idea. I decided I was going to get the surgery too and my parents were delighted for me as they had heard about this fantastic-new-operation-that-boosts-the-quality-of-your-life too. I immediately went to choose what colour the plastic tube would be. For some reason you had to choose bottles of ink. I chose an ink that was a dark purple. I then had to hold onto my bottle of ink I was due to have the surgery, then give it to the surgeon who would use it to colour the tube. The good thing about the procedure was that you didn't have to go to hospital, you could have it done at home and it only took a few minutes to complete. The day of the operation arrived. Surgery was in the garden under a marquee and recovery was a decing area that appeared to be in a tree. All of next doors kids got in a queue for the marquee. They didn't have to wait long as the operations were over very quickly. I visited one of them in recovery to see how they were doing. They said they felt no pain and were very happy. At this point I started to have my doubt about the benefits of this surgery. My time for the procedure arrived quickly. I lay down on the operating table but at the last moment I came to my senses and decided not to have the operation. Everyone looked at me as if I was mad, but also with pity. (By the way, I still didn't know what the surgery was FOR.) No, THEY were the mad one. I decided to ask the person I had visited in recovery why they had it done. What was the point? What was the benefit? They told me that it was something to do with digestion. It bypasses something via the tube which makes it more efficient while eating. It was also suggested to me that to keep it working properly one had to regularly shove stuff into their rectum. They really were insane. Every single one of them. I retreated home and watched them frolic around the garden with multicoloured tubes hanging and flapping out of their bellys, and wondered what the world had come to.