By twelve, when I began to have the vaguest inkling of what did interest boys, it really pissed me off. Naturally I blamed my father. But not right away. I waited until my eighteenth birthday before starting my mass campaign of revenge for the way women were treated in Western society in general and MY society in particular, by arguing with him about everything and anything. These arguments included, but were not limited to, that most beloved of all our constitutional amendments, the very glue that holds our great society together, NUMBER TWO – the right to bear arms.

The year was 1967. Flower power was budding throughout the land. THE PILL had given women certain social options they had never known before. In three years I would be bringing four pounds of marijuana through Kennedy airport. Or two keys, if you prefer the lingo of 1970. (Forget it, I checked. The statute of limitations has run out on my crime and I don’t plan to run for any political office and yes, dammit, I did inhale. And I NEVER sold any of it. It was purely for medical use. I suffered from terminal feelings of outrage and this was my palliative drug.)

Let me state for the record here that I was not interested in bearing arms myself. I was busy bearing a pottery wheel or a paint brush with acrylics dripping from it as I attacked a stretched canvas. Sometimes nude.

Brother at Harvard

Here’s how this argument went, while my brother, the Harvard man, sat out each inning on the sidelines presumably storing more standardized-test type information in his enormous brain, which seemed to have a limitless capacity for anything that could be answered by filling in a small circle with the point of a number two pencil.

Dad: Did you see where those kids marched on Washington? And then burned their draft cards?

Me: They have every right to petition their government. It’s an immoral war.

Dad: When your government tells you to go to war you don’t have the option of questioning the morality of it. It’s your duty to go.

Me: That sounds a lot like what the Nazis said. “I was only following orders.”

Dad: I fought for the rights of people like your friends who are marching so they would have the freedom to do whatever they want, no matter how ill-founded and misguided it might be.

Me: So we agree. They have every right to march.

Dad: I fought for those rights but I don’t agree with them. So they should go and fight this war even if they don’t agree with it.

Me: That’s crazy. It’s like saying because we have the right to bear arms that every one of us should have a bazooka in the backyard next to the barbecue.

Dad: Exactly.

Me: WHAT?

Dad: My point exactly. I defended with my life the right of every American to bear arms. And to speak freely even if I don’t agree with what a particular person has to say.

Me: So you think the right to bear arms means we should be able to have a Howitzer parked in the driveway?

Dad: The second amendment says, “the right to bear arms,” and I take that literally.

Me: Well then, you wouldn’t mind if I manufactured my own nuclear device in the kitchen. I would be protected by the Constitution.

Dad: That is not the point. You’re not going to do that.

Mom: Will you two stop now?