From the day
Perspective: The Teenager · Sound
The street is a dizzying racket of clattering hooves and motor horns, but all I can hear is that "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier" tune drifting out of every open window. Ma is in the kitchen fussing over her new Pyrex glass dish like it’s a diamond, screaming at me to stop loitering, but I’m just trying to catch a glimpse of the rich swells bragging about that fancy transcontinental telephone call they made. It’s lousy weather for a stroll, yet the newsboys are shrieking about that poor lady leaping down the Washington shaft until my ears ring. I’d rather drown out the world with the hum of those new sonar pulses they say are pinging through the deep, dreaming of a place far from this gray sidewalk stuff.