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Surrounding Riverside Commons were fancy homes, but we had to walk only ten minutes or so to some shops and other businesses.

We had gone about a block when I asked, “What’s a tampon? That guy said you didn’t have a gun, all you had was a tampon.”

“It’s nothing, just a kind of sponge.”

“You mean like the one on the kitchen-sink drainboard?”

“Not exactly like that.”

“Like the ones they use at the car wash over on Seventh Street?”

“No, not that big.”

“Why would he think you had a sponge in your purse?”

“Well, because I do. Women do.”

“Why do you carry a sponge in your purse?”

“I like to be prepared.”

“Prepared for what? You mean like if you spill something?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you ever needed it?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re a very neat person,” I said. “I try to be neat, too.”

We were passing a bus stop, and she said she needed to sit down on the bench, and when she sat there, she started laughing so that tears came to her eyes.

Sitting beside her, looking around but seeing nothing hilarious, I said, “What’s so funny?”

She shook her head and took a Kleenex from her purse and blotted her eyes. She tried to stop laughing but couldn’t, and finally she said, “I was just thinking about those two idiot delinquents.”

“They weren’t funny, Mom. They were scary.”

“They were scary,” she agreed. “But silly, too, in a way. Maybe I’m just laughing with relief, neither of us hurt.”

“Boy, you sure faked them out.”

She said, “And you kept your cool.”

When she finished blotting her eyes and blowing her nose, she tossed the Kleenex in a waste can beside the bench.

I said, “Are you sometimes able to fool idiots like them because the tampon sponge is shaped like a gun?”

That started her laughing again. I decided she had a case of the giggles, like when something strikes you a lot funnier than it really is but then for some reason everything seems funny until finally the giggles go away, sort of like hiccups.

Between giggles she said, “Honey … tampon isn’t … a nasty word. But you … shouldn’t use it anyway.”

“I shouldn’t? Why?”

“It’s not a word … little b

oys … should use.”