About six months ago, I shot Garvey in the foot with a BB and a slingshot. Boy, that made him mad. It wasn't even on purpose. But he was plenty mad anyway. I called him up the other day.

"Hey Garv. Remember when I shot you in the foot?"

"Yeah, I sure do. Boy, was I pissed."

"Yeah. Listen, Garv, I want you to shoot me in the foot."

"Naw, that's alright, man. I'm not mad at you anymore."

"Yeah, I know. But if you shoot me in the foot, Garv, then I can get good and mad at you."

"Why do you want to get mad at me for?"

"Fair's fair, Garvey. You got mad at me. Now it's my turn."

"No way. I don't want you mad at me."

"Why not?"

"Besides, how can you get mad at me? It's your idea. I'll just be doing what you want. How can you get mad if I do what you want?"

"Well, goddamnit Garv, do something I don't want, then."

"What are you, crazy man? I'm not gonna do something you don't want just so you can get mad at me. It doesn't matter what I do anyway, you'll be wanting me to, so you can't get mad."

"Well goddamn, Garvey, what are we gonna do then? I want what's coming to me. It's my turn to be mad at you."

"I'm sorry man, I can't help you. Find someone else to get mad at."

"Goddamnit Garvey, you're make me mad right now, I'm warning you."

"What. What are you gonna do, huh? Get even? Shoot me in the foot again?"

"You're really starting to piss me off, man. Why don't you do this one thing for me, huh?"

"No way. Forget it. No."

"Remember after I shot your foot? And I bought you like a new pair of shoes and an ice cream cone? C'mon, let me get angry."

"New shoes! Big deal! You want some new shoes, I'll get you new shoes."

"Damnit Garvey, that's not-"

"You want ice cream, I'll buy you some goddamn ice cream. But I ain't making you mad, and that's final!" Then he hung up.

Boy, did that piss me off. The nerve of that guy! After everything I did for him! I carried him back to his car, I got him a band-aid for his foot, I bought him the shoes and the ice cream. What kind of friend was he? Garvey has really changed. He used to be my best friend- but now, a selfish bastard. Boy, did that piss me off.

You know, a long time ago there was math, right? And math was pretty good but they couldn't do everything with it. They couldn't measure the way things changed. Sure, they could measure how things were different, but that's not the same. They couldn't measure the way things changed. So Newton and Leibnitz at the same time decided to invent a new math to measure the way things change. It was pretty good, too. Folks use it to fly planes and bomb cities even today.

But now I think we need an even newer math. A way to figure the way change changes. I mean, calculus can measure the way things change, and the way things' changes change, but not the way change changes. That may seem kind of nuts, but it's true.

I mean, get in your car, and accelerate. They got ways to say how your changing at one exact instant. An instant- that's no span of time at all. How can something change when there's no time passing? Well, they figured it out. And they can also figure out how your change changes- like when you stop accelerating and start decelerating. You ever notice how when you go from speeding up to slowing down that your car keeps moving anyway? Well, they can find out the exact instant when you go from speeding up to slowing down. That's measuring speed's change's change.

But what about the way change itself changes, in that instant. That would mean they would have to find an instant's instant! They can't do it!

If they could, maybe I could figure how come I got so mad at Garvey when I shot him with that BB! I mean we were walking along the ditch, the one where the Olson used to run-off into when there was a big rain before the canal they put under the highway. It was all dry and cracked and stunk real bad. There was old diapers and fast food containers and chicken bones and discarded shoes and pieces of tires and about a million cigarette butts and rusted up beer cans. We were looking for rats.

Garvey got one right when we started, but he didn't pull the strap hard enough and the damn thing just ran off. I almost got one but I missed by about a mile and a half. That made me really mad. I hated all the rats in the world for that. I hated every single one of them.

Then I saw this beauty. It was all fat and greasy and just sitting on an old tire like it owned the whole ditch, its kingdom. I told Garv to hold still, and he didn't even try to shoot it. I loaded up a BB, and pulled the strap way back. And I just held it there. I could feel the tension in my arm, in my shoulder, my jeans jacket tight across my back. I closed one eye, and felt the ache in my fingers. I was gonna nail that thing, was gonna put a hole right through it's goddamn forehead. Then I snapped my fingers open, and the rat jumped backwards. There was a puff of dust on the tire. Then Garvey started hopping up and down like some kind of freak.

"Goddamn goddamn goddamn it!"

"What?" Boy was I pissed. I missed the damn rat!

"My foot!"

"What?"

There was blood all over Garvey's shoe.

"You shot my foot!"

"What?"

"My foot! You bounced it off the tire!"

That started to get me mad. There he was all high and proud and shot a rat on his first try, and then my shot misses by about a mile and hits him in the foot. What kind of guy was this?

"Help me back to the car."

"No way, man. I almost got him!"

"Help me back goddamnit!"

So I helped him back, him hobbling like a baby, cursing. We got in my car and we went back to his place and I got him a wet towel and a band-aid.

He didn't even get out of my car. He just sat in the seat with the door open, and cursed for a while while he took off his shoe. The blood didn't even make his sock very dirty- just a spot, size of a half dollar.

There was my BB, stuck in the top of his foot. My BB! Damnit! I could have got that damn rat. It was humongous, big as a cat! Garvey!

He got the band-aid over the hole, but he didn't want to put his sock or shoe back on. I drove us to McDonald's and got a couple of cones. I asked to see his shoe.

"Why?"

We were parked in the McDonald's lot.

"Just gimme it."

It was an old converse sneaker, white, with a big red stain over the tongue and the dirty laces. The hole was right in the middle of the tongue. Goddamn. If I had hit that rat, he wouldn't have a head no more, I swear.

I started the car.

"Where we goin'?"

"K-mart."

When we got there, I was so pissed, I just left him in the car and went in. I found a pair of white Keds in his size, and paid for them with cash. Hell, I needed to quit smoking for a while anyway.

I threw them on his lap. "There."

"What the hell is this?"

"Shoes."

"What?"

"New shoes"

"I don't need new shoes."

"Well, you got 'em."

"Goddamn it."

"Yeah, goddamn it."

I guess I kind of like being mad, but I never feel it when I'm pissed at something. That's wrong- if I like something, I should feel it when I'm being it. Not feeling good when I'm mad really pisses me off.

Garvey and me used to throw rocks at rats when were in high school. Then he got busted for smoking and they kicked him out, so he moved in with his dad across town. He calls me up after five years, and says, wanna go shoot rats? He got these two beautiful slingshots, the kind my big brother used to order from the backs of comic books. Garvey never used to try to really hit the rats. He never used to be such a goddamn freak. But now when we walk through the ditch we just throw rocks again.