YOUNG MAN: . . . say, do you think the bomb's gonna fall?

   BARBER: The shave is 85 cents.

   YOUNG MAN: (handing barber twenty-dollar bill): I don't think it's going to fall, and you know why? Because it's too easy to think it'll fall. What's really strange and difficult to imagine is it NEVER falling!

   BARBER: (handing him change): Too much thinking about the bomb seems to me like the bomb is doing its damage without having to fall--here's your change.

   YOUNG MAN: Right you are! (He gives Barber big tip.) What with everybody so bomb conscious it is as though it has fallen in a way, mentally that is, because now they got these shelters and they're always gonna have them and that means that all the babies to come will have to ask what the shelters are, and the parents will have to explain to them, and not many parents can explain death, so the poor kids will have to consult their deaths when everything about them is life.  (460)