The Me-Gun is a new line of weaponry, developed by scientists in the year 1980. Every youth in America is shot with one of these guns on their birthday every year (helpfully disguised as a pennicillin shot). It inhibits awareness of one's environment and rapidly inflates one's opinion of his or herself, to the point where the world truly does appear to be revolving around you. The follies of other people quickly become meaningless after three or four injections, and by the age of twelve most youths are too engrossed with a cellular phone to even hear about the real world anyway.