The story is based on an impression from life. That house, on the right side of the ravine, on Washington Street in Waukegan. Every day on the way to school I passed by its back facade, half hidden by the trees, and wondered who lived there. What kind of strange life do its inhabitants lead... and are there children there? I have never come across them. However, I walked past: to school one way, from school another, along the bottom of a ravine, I looked up, and there was this house. And my imagination ran wild. I didn’t see a soul, but thoughts came to me: “What if I were a boy living in the house, and what if the residents also think about the outside world as I think about the inside of the house?” In other words, it seems to them that the outside world is empty, just as it seems to me that there is no one inside.