“Look I don’t like him,” I said regarding some young guy trucker who had attached to the soldier like a baby on a nipple yesterday. “I can hear him and he’s rude.”

“Well P, this is New York. When have you ever heard someone from New York say please?”

“Plenty of New Yorkers are polite. Matter of fact most New Yorkers I have ever met have been polite. That guy is a JERK!”

“Speedy Gonzales never said please,” he said, referencing the enigma that is Speedy. “I use to have to bust his chops for it. Rude New Yorker.”

“Speedy was rude?”

“Hell yes. And I’d bust him in the chops for it and he’d bust me right back. Yeah, he’d hit me with those little meaty hooks of his. Speedy didn’t have hands, he had those little meaty hooks where his hands should have been.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, and he’d try to hit me in my big nose too. On purpose! He’d do it to make my eye water. Hit me in my nose so my eyes would tear and I couldn’t see and then he’d pummel me in the ribs.”

“That bastard!”

“Yeah, but I was the one who taught Speedy the cut over the eye trick.”

“What’s that?”

“Well it’s illegal. But if you’re quick with your jab, you can jab in the eye and then twist a little when you pull back and cut the skin over the eye with your thumb. Just a little cut, like a paper cut but it bleeds profusely into the eye and blinds the guy.”

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah, so I’d do that and then I’d pummel him in the ribs with my meaty hooks.”

I laughed.

“Yep and then we talk about which one of us was the dirtiest fighter and sometimes fight over it too.”

“Ah, Speedy.”

“Yeah, he was a jerk all right. There is a New York jerk for you.”

“He was a friend of yours.”

“Yep.”