Then we’re at school, of course. Where else would we learn the consequences of our actions, the root of our own self-loathing? This is the first of a series of bricks placed within Pinky, the first slither of pain to slide its way into his skin and set him up for the mask that he’ll wear for as long as he can manage to keep the air from snapping its way out of his body.

The family is as much a mask as the one that we wear when we walk out our doors. The primping and pining from Mommy, the expectation and pressure of Daddy. “All in all, it was just bricks in the wall.” This, then, must be the moment that I knew that The Wall would come to define so much of my life at the age of 22, when I actually saw the film in its entirety.

It’s so easy to get lost in the fray of school children and discipline. You wander about aimlessly in your own shell until someone pokes deep enough to penetrate, picking at your exposed nerves until you’re left itching and raw from the constant prod of a piquerist’s perverse desire to see you squirm.

Away from the protection of your family you’re thrown into a vat of endless bodies, meat for the slaughter, faceless mounds of flesh plopped onto underdeveloped bones and left malleable for the psychological warfare spread so thickly upon every child from those who have sworn to teach them the ABCs.