nd Julie says “Oh-oh, Margo, when Daddy was a boy again,” and I say “Yes, sure, a boy and then a teen and so on, same things you’ll be except for the boy, but cutting it off, meaning it got worse, when I got to around thirty. Not that I’m saying I didn’t get into fights when I was a kid. I did, as my neighborhood, and especially the ones around it, and later my high school, could be rough and boys acted that way then. At a party or right after school, grade or high. Or they suddenly appeared on your street in a big group and got after you — picked fights, we called it — and over nothing. To show they were tough. For dopey or psychological reasons I don’t want to go into — having to do with their minds and the way they were raised — and you protected yourself or set a time and place, usually in the park on the grass so you didn’t crack your skull on the pavement, and fought them one to one, your friends and theirs standing in a ring around you so nobody cheated in the fight and the winner didn’t take it too far. So, all up and up but in a way terrifying because you could still get your wind knocked out and also lose the fight too easily. Though never with a gun, never a knife, not even a rock or club; at the most a hanky tied around your knuckles if you had one. But mostly you just fought in self-defense to stop them from busting your nose or for them to think you’re an easy guy to be picked on a second time,” and one of them says “How do you mean the nose?” and I say “Who said that?” and Julie says “Julie,” and I say “I’m sorry, darling, sometimes you both sound alike. Well, you’re sisters. But you were saying I wasn’t clear then, right? And I wasn’t when I should be, another thing I was mulling over when Margo suddenly scared me, how I should be able to think in my mind more — well of course thinking is in my mind, but—” and Julie says “No, I was saying how can they bust your nose? With a hammer?” and I say “Their fists. Imag ine,” and I raise my right hand into a fist and jerk it forward several times. “Pow, nose splattered. Half my friends had them, splattered schnozzolas, from that and football and which they were proud of, the fools, showing how stupid we were then too. I wasn’t, with that, because I didn’t bust mine. If I had I would’ve thought ‘Oh dear, my looks, ruined, I won’t be a Greek god to girls anymore,’ only kidding, but probably so, while they thought with their broken noses they would because it gave them a rough he-mannish look. But some boys, not any I knew — oh, I knew of them but didn’t want to know them because these guns meant bullets in the foot and gang wars — actually only one bullet since it only shot one, and—” and Margo says “What guns? You said before no guns. You’re confusing us again, Daddy,” and I say “Boys had — some did — not any I palled around with — zip guns then, handmade ones that were made from toy guns or a pipe and a rubberband, if you can believe it, that got the bullet off, and of course the toy gun converted into a zip. They made them then because I suppose you couldn’t buy the real ones — they weren’t around as much and probably were too expensive and maybe boys were still a little frightened of the real thing and still into — involved in constructing and fashioning things on their own then, bad as what they constructed was — we all had to take two years of shop in seventh and eighth grades while the girls took home economics. But half the time these zip guns backfired in your face when you shot them, or maybe that’s only what the police and older people told us to keep them out of our hands. Some other boys though, again not ones I wanted to know, and these to me were scarier than the zip guns, for you at least knew there was a chance the gun would misfire or the shooter of it would get it in his foot or face, while the switchblade never missed. In other words, there was always some part of you it hit. Well, these other kids carried switchblade knives — I didn’t mention this before?” and I listen but don’t hear anything from them so I go on. “But I wouldn’t touch one, because they also reminded me of terror, murder, gang fights with knives and zips and bicycle chains and guys pinning you to the ground and kicking your teeth in, stuff I could never do, or do only if I was attacked and my life depended on it and I saw one of these weapons on the ground, but I certainly wouldn’t do anything to some guy I’d already subdued. I also didn’t like—‘subdued’; to, you know, win over, beat by force — didn’t like these knives because they could zip open on your finger, so maybe they should have been called zip knives, for that’s how they opened, zip! — but cutting it. But I guess the ‘switch’ in the word — never thought of this before, not that it’s important — it isn’t — is the thing that springs it open. You flicked a little switch on the knife’s handle near where the blade and handle joined, if I remember right,” and I hold up my right hand as if there’s a closed switchblade knife in it and pretend to flick it open as if I remember where, thumb and forefinger rubbing—“and the blade sprung out. Anyway, it did that, cut your finger, or could, and could also spring open in your pocket by mistake and cut your thigh or pants, and then you’re in a jam, at least with the pants, with your mom. Because you got to know, the art of making these knives couldn’t have been so perfect, as the people who wanted them — punks, hoods — wouldn’t know the difference or really didn’t care; they just wanted a scary-looking weapon with a long blade that could fold back into the handle and stay hidden there, and if it stopped working right they’d just toss it away and buy another one. I remember as a kid I used to see a whole bunch of them sticking blade-point-down in wood, or maybe it was a sort of solid foam, but in store windows in Times Square and other places in New York, and maybe they’re still there. Also that I used to think when I looked at these knives ‘How can the police let the shopkeepers sell these things and put them in their windows, no less, to interest thousands of potential customers a day?’ I mean, that’s the point — that’s economics, marketing, business; you think you can sell them so you advertise or show them in the best possible spots. Or you just want to sell them, to make money, but what do you think of the creep you’re selling one of these to or about the person or the cop, which is the other point I had, he’s going to possibly use it on? It’s too unbelievable. But there they were, and most of the knives in Army-Navy stores they called them. So I’m saying, everything about these knives represented to me — that word again — an ugly dog-beat-dog-to-death life I didn’t want to live. I in fact hated it and wanted to become an adult in part just so I wouldn’t have to face young toughs with switchblades and guns anymore or just their crazy fists and kicking feet, and hey, look how that turned out. They’re all around us now, weapons, and kids are tougher to adults than they ever were, though believe me they were always tough, and believe me also when I say I was no saint then myself but I wasn’t a devil either. You know, somehow I don’t think I’m making much sense. Repeating myself, often contradicting myself, meaning saying the opposite or near opposite to what I just said but with as much belief. Am I, or should I just drive?” and Margo says “A little, but drive too,” and I say “Funny, funny, does this kit have a sense of hummus?” and Julie says “Really, Daddy, you’re only making a very little sense; you don’t say things to understand and you’re not nice to the people you talk about,” and I say “Not nice, not nice? After all I said and you’re still on their side just because they’re kids?” raising my voice, angry, I can’t believe it, she’s just a little kid, I’m always doing this, where’s it come from and how come I can’t stop it? From now on I will. Make it that way. From now on you stop! “Okay, I apologize, about the earlier stuff if I offended the ladies, but I’d like to bust some of those boys’ faces for what they do to people, at least tackle and slap them, and guys like those schmucks who tried to scare the crap out of us. But okay, okay, but anyway, nobody then — boys — owned the powerful guns they do today. Boys and men, what am I talking about? For they’ve machine guns and submachine guns and probably semi- and quarterma-chine guns if there’re such things. All the guns. AKA this, ZBT-10 that. Even the initials, numbers and names are a clever come-on by the manufacturers of the guns, like for cars, though the ones I gave aren’t them. But a turn-on, a something-on, a buy me, use-me, abuse-me, that’s what I’m for if I’m affordable and if I’m unaffordable then all you got to do to get me is rob a few people with knives or normal rifles or handguns. I mean, boys — I know you heard Mommy and I discussing it the other night — boys of fourteen and fifteen getting on buses and maybe even paying the correct fare to do this…Okay, it happened recently with only one city bus and once with a commuter train when it was at a station for a stop. But Jesse James way-out-Wild-West style, but instead of holding up stagecoaches, which was bad enough, they hold up the entire bus and train car with these big blow-off-your-upper-torso guns with a single spraying round. Sorry, I’m being too graphic — I’m describing too much — and then for good measure—‘Oh, thank you, kind boys’—slamming two women in the cheek with the gun butts because they didn’t say thanks when these young robbers emptied their purses into a shopping bag and threw them back in their faces. And on the train another young hood putting the gun barrel — that’s the long part where the bullet comes out — into a man’s mouth far as it would go and pulling the trigger — nothing was in the first round, ha-ha — and giving the guy an almost fatal heart attack. So why, I’m asking, was asking — either of you have an answer? And why do boys set fire to derelicts — you know, bums on the street, but here on subway benches where they’re sleeping? Hey, subways were safe when I was a boy. The toilets were even open though so smelly to be unusable unless you had an emergency. I used to go downtown myself to Macy’s when I was ten or eleven to buy Christmas gifts for my parents and dog — maybe today during the Christmas season they’re a bit safer too. After all — well, I wanted to say something about ‘bad for business’ and especially during the month the stores make forty percent of their money — but I won’t. But do you think I’d ever let you do that alone at thirteen, fourteen, even if you were boys and traveling together? Though your mommy, who’s a good deal younger than I, used to do it too — go to some special genius girls’ school in New York when she was eleven and right through high school, so that must mean the city was still a lot safer then too, though she can recall incidents she didn’t like,” and Margo says “Like what?” and I say “Ask her — but on the subway, usually going to school during rush hour when it was crowded and she couldn’t get a seat,” and Margo says “So she had to stand. So what sort of things?” and I say “You know, you can imagine it, with men,” and Julie says “What they do to her?” and I say “They didn’t act nice to young girls. Some men didn’t with older girls too, but these guys I’m talking about were even worse. Because you know, or you don’t, and why should you? though maybe now’s as good a time as any to find out — for Margo; you, Julie, you keep your hands over your ears, hear? But older men — I didn’t mean to be cute about it; just listen, both of you, seriously to what I say. Older men can be a bit peculiar,