The most merciless weapon
"Nobody's gonna leave my murdered carcass splayed on the roadside for early-morning joggers to trip across!" I'd tell myself as I stomped along. "I'm not gonna be lying there dead with every orifice violated, not me, because I've got this, you know, thing here, this metal whatever-it-is. So, yeah, I'd like to see somebody try something, especially now that I've decided constant practice swings are in order until I reach a safe destination."
So I'd walk along, throwing random jabs, spinning around, thinking I heard something. "Who's there?" I'd hiss. "Take that!" And I'd continue to lunge about like a hallucinating heroin addict, because they're out there, people who want to hurt you, and you have to be prepared.
So gather your weapons. My husband carries a gun in his glove compartment. I don't know how comfortable I am with that, because I really think a lug wrench would do fine. I've never had to hit anyone with mine, but I bet it would hurt. My mother once fought off a biker in New Orleans with a broken souvenir glass from Pat O'Brien's. He wasn't actually trying to kill us or anything, the biker, in fact he was simply riding his Harley really slow and it kind of looked like he might have been leering in our direction. So my mother waved the weapon at him as he went by, and he kept going.
Looking back, you'd think my mother could have done better than a broken Hurricane glass, seeing as how she made her living designing defense weapons for the government. Whenever anyone asks me what it was like to have a missile scientist for a mother, I think of my childhood mornings. My mother was gone by the time we awoke, and sometimes she'd leave us bowls of Halloween candy for breakfast. "Cool!" I'd think, and by class time I had such a sugar buzz I could bend spoons with my brain. But she never brought her work home with her, so we didn't get to play with rockets in our backyard or anything, though sometimes she'd travel to Washington, D.C., on business and bring back ashtrays she pilfered from the hotel.
My father didn't like us eating candy for breakfast, but he slept late because his habit of charming people into buying him beers at his favorite bar every night required a lot of energy. Sometimes, though, he'd make it a point to rise early and force feed us, like, Welsh rarebit topped with capers or whatever. He put capers on everything, and pearl onions. He liked to experiment with different cuisines, creating complicated entrees like oyster souffle and homemade rabbit-bladder sausage and stuff, with capers and pearl onions everywhere.
He might as well have been asking us to eat battery acid; I mean, that's how eagerly we anticipated his dinners. We became experts at squirreling food in our pockets to feed to the dog on bathroom breaks. Sometimes my father would throw his hands up in exasperation at our Philistine palates, then it would fall upon my mother to make her famous tamale pie from a box, which required nothing more complicated than browning a pound of burger meat. We feasted on it like famine victims while my father stood in the corner of the kitchen and chain-smoked.
But regarding weapons, my father didn't carry any on his actual person, but he once went through a failed bread-baking binge that resulted in about 30 loaves as dense as bricks wrapped in tin foil. He certainly could have used those to brain any burglars attempting to invade the homestead. I say this because I think it was important to him to feel he provided for his family in a sufficient manner, even though he didn't make an income. Would it be any different with any father?
After my mother left him, my sisters and I almost always ate dinner with her at her groovy singles apartment complex, chowing on char-grilled hotdogs at the poolside "mixers." But still my father cooked us dinners every night -- anticipating our appearance -- and I remember seeing their cold remnants in the kitchen the next morning, intact dinners except for the small portions missing he had served himself. Once I saw he'd made us a tamale pie, but not from a box, and with capers and pearl onions everywhere. Looking back I wish we could have pretended we liked some of his meals, but when you're young, your weapon is honesty, which is perhaps the most merciless of them all.
