“I started carrying a knife in my junior year of high school. It was around the same time a big brother figure lent me a copy of the novel Vertical Run. The plot: a business executive named David Elliot walks into his office one morning, and his boss aims a gun at his head. He survives the encounter, but a band of ruthless mercenaries shows up attempting to put a bullet or 12 in his back. Dave, a Vietnam vet, has no idea why everyone wants him dead, but he’s more focused on making it out of the high-rise alive than solving the mystery. It was a great read and became one of the handful of books I’ve voluntarily read more than once. While the prose isn't Nobel Prize worthy, it did contain a scene that spoke to something in my anxious mind—a flashback wherein Dave’s unit receives advice from “the Black Mamba,” a colonel they served under. When I later bought my own copy, I dog-eared the page, highlighted the quote, and went about memorizing it.
And what do logic and reason tell us, gentlemen? What they tell us is this: when someone shoots at you, the only rational response is to — with dispassion and dispatch — render that enemy incapable of shooting at you again. There is, gentlemen, no reasonable alternative to this course of action.
It became a mantra, one of the theme songs of my life, constantly playing in the back of my head.”
My creative nonfiction piece “Protection” is a tour of Boston Commons and the Public Gardens and how to appropriately wield a knife in a public setting. It has been published in the latest issue of Portrait of New England.
Click on the link on the below. “Protection” begins on page 33.
