This week I worked with a class of first graders for several days straight. As you might imagine, dear reader, these forthright, blossoming young men and women have a tendency to resolve their disagreements in the most unsuccessful of ways. Tuesday this week I was lucky witness to no fewer than five violent flare ups involving a particular group of young guys. In this situation, the trick is to balance between aborting the hijinks as soon as possible, and ensuring that the parties feel that their frustration has been expressed. The natural response, shouting "Ahoy! Such skulduggery be dangerous and risky! Stop it!" never works, as the vituperative one then feels his will is being denied and his message unheard—therefore he (andit is always a he) strikes out more violently, even if the other party has already lost interest.

Beside the ineffectiveness of this approach, there is the longer-term concern: we want the young scholar to practice other ways of solving problems, so we ask the two combatants to sit down and face one another and state their concerns. Since "stating one's concerns" often takes the form of crying or, alas, grabbing a handful of gravel and hurling it at the other's open eyeballs, the well-prepared teacher has a witty directive at the ready: "Use your words, Constantine. Use your words."

After school, life goes on. Tastes sweeter, I think, or maybe that's just Spring flirting with me. I walk a ways, take a bus, meander my gentle oddyssey home, defering the many problems which live there in my bed. Yesterday, after spacing out on the bus for a few minutes, I heard the following conversation develop between two bus patrons toward the front of the bus, who faced one another:

"That's right! That's how I make my living. I bet you make yours on welfare."

"Yes, I do!"

"Yeah, MY TAXES! Well, until you get off welfare and start to earn your way, you can kiss my ass."

"Shut up!"

"How about you shut up!"

The first speaker, I should point out, was a large burly man who later claimed to be a Vietnam War veteran—"And what do you think that means?" he said. The second was a small, frail woman who looked to be in her 40s or 50s. In a show of civics rarely seen in this country, other bus riders got involved:

"That's enough, now."

"Why don't you move to the back, sir?"

"I don't have to move nowhere. I paid my fare. How about this—I'm going to get off where you get off, bitch, and if you still have anything to say to me then, we can take care of it right there."

"That's not going to happen sir."

"Sir, this is my son's first bus ride, he doesn't need to hear—"

"I paid my fare and I'll talk if I want to."

This gentleman was using his words, but not quite in the way I wanted to ask him to. When he disembarked (before the frail woman did, by the grace of Hera), I saw that he had been carrying a large axe. Heavy wooden handle, about three feet; arcing steel head, two feet.