…Mother Wolf threw herself down amongst the panting cubs, and Father Wolf said to her gravely:
     “Shere Khan speaks this much truth. The cub must be shown to the pack. Wilt thou still keep him, Mother?”
    “Keep him!” she gasped. “He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet he was not afraid. Look, he has pushed one of my babes to one side already. And that lame butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingungra while the villagers hunted through all our lairs in revenge! Keep him? Assuredly I will keep him. Lie still, little frog. O thou Mowgli—for Mowgli the Frog I will call thee—the time will come when thou wilt hunt Shere Khan as he has hunted thee.”

    My cruel parents, probably thinking I needed discipline or maybe wanting a night to themselves, signed me up for Cubs. I hated it—the regimentation, uniforms, mythological bullshit. All this was the reason why I knew in advance that I would hate the army. But Cubs—I never made it to Scouts thank God—meant Kipling and Mowgali and the Lore of the Jungle. At first, being completely unfamiliar with Rudyard’s imperialistic ravings, I had no idea what they were talking about most of the time. All that Shere Khan and dibbing and dobbing—utter nonsense! Then, after many embarrassing moments, that penny dropped and I insisted my mother obtain the Jungle Book. I might have found it enjoyable, had it not been an obligation. It was like those Jungle Boy movies where a prepubescent Tarzan impersonator rode around on elephants, which pleased my imagination well enough, but I also had to learn all those silly animal names—I couldn’t remember any of them. The only good times I had were the stone fights with the rival sixers outside the hall afterwards, until one evening I broke the frosted glass window in the door and was chucked out of the pack as a result. My aim had never been so accurate previously.
    Now this fundamental failure to be ignited by Kipling remains a torment to me to this day—I always knew I was off-key somehow with all this literary stuff. Now it was proven beyond any reasonable doubt.