Page 157 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 145

of the human condition lie often in the individual, but more often
within the institution which subsumes him.”
Lock stood up next to the spinet. “That’s not really true,” Lock
said, uncaged in the free atmosphere Dryden generated. “People
fight themselves and call it the institu tion...”
“The seminary,” a voice interjected.
“All right, the seminary,” Lock continued, “or the world or what-
ever frame it is they’re involved in.”
“You’re on to something there.” Dryden retrieved his upstage
position. “Several years ago at Catholic University we heard some
rather shocking gossip about Miseri cor dia. You remember, that fel-
low who took the freshmen to the shower room.”
“Porky Puhl,” Hank the Tank said, “was in our class, but he was
definitely not in our class.”
Everyone laughed, ha ha.
“But he did ‘measure up,’” Dryden said.
The courtiers roared.
Dryden poured something into a small glass. “It’s good to ven-
tilate some topics.”
I grew wary hearing their lurid details about a shipped boy’s
impurity.
“What’s he drinking?” I asked Mike in a whisper.
“Pernod,” he said. “There’s Coke for us iced in the bathtub.”
Dryden sniffed his glass. “My theory on that poor fellow is that
the seminary merely provided, by its very nature as an institution,
the hothouse environment in which the individual’s neurotic ten-
dencies could bloom.”
“Then there is something wrong with such an institution,” Lock
said.
“Maybe,” Dryden sipped at his glass. “If one subscribes to the
theory that people are good and institutions are evil.”
“Do you believe that?” Lock said.
“This is 1960. A new decade. I believe that when people are
evil or misguided or mentally ill, it is the institution to which they
belong, be it country, corporation, or church, that is responsible for
their dis-inte gration.”
“Then you don’t hold Porky Puhl responsible,” Lock countered.

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