It went on like this for ten minutes, back and forth, attracting a small audience around us eagerly waiting to see if Austin would ever finish his milk. Until finally, I waited for him to take the largest possible gulp. I turned around at just the right moment with just the right combination of fingers stuffed into the right combination of face holes. Austin lurched forward for a moment to try to stop himself from reacting. And then, all at once, a violent stream of milk exploded from his nose, all down his sweater, and pooled momentarily in his pants before seeping into the fabric.

The audience around us erupted in screams of laughter, and Austin’s own outburst turned from a milky chortle to anguish as he stomped away from us, wailing in protest.

There are a few lessons to draw here, the first of which, of course, is that children are terrible human beings, and I was certainly no exception. (Though, in my defense, Austin grew up to be an even bigger dick, and once said, “I’m fat, but at least I’m not fat and gay like Matt Bellassai,” so I don’t regret ruining his dumb pants, and if I could, I’d go back, do it all again, and then smash his stupid face into that puddle of snotty lap milk before it seeped onto his tiny ogre dick.)

Most significantly, though, this was the first time I realized that comedy could be weaponized. I might not have been the fastest or strongest, but I could spin a joke or pull a face, and bring an oafish menace like Austin to his knees. And yes, perhaps I’d have to make myself look like a fool for the sake of a laugh, but at least it was my laugh in the end, even if I ended the day in a pair of someone else’s shorts, carrying my own soiled pants and underwear in a plastic Baggie.

•  •  •

I’m not one of those cool New Yorkers who lunched with Nora Ephron, but I like to pretend that I am. I imagine we would have sat for hours at a café drinking coffees, ordering extra croissants when we’d finished the two we’d each already eaten, and smearing them with extra high-fat butter. We’d have been wearing matching turtlenecks and scarves, discussing which wrinkle-reducing eye creams we’d discovered most recently, or which new dessert shop we would try next, or perhaps, after the sixth croissant, whether Angelina Jolie would ever find love again.