There once were some nips that behaved themselves well. In sunshine and springtime they raised no great hell. They sat there like nips do, as nips often will, beneath little sweaters, all quiet and still.
But wait for October. Just wait for the breeze. A shiver, a draft, or a sixty-degree freeze, and those same harmless nips, to the shock of the town, grew tiny white teeth that came suddenly down…
Not big giant tusks like a boar or a shark. No, neat little teeth, prim and pearly and stark. The sort of small teeth that would smile as they bit, like a lawyer in church or a banker in shit.
The first one bit Jerry of West Hackensack. He leaned in for a cuddle and sprang five feet back.
“Ay-yiyiyi-yikes!” Jerry howled to the sky, “My finger! My finger! My finger! Oh my!”
His sweetheart, named Mabel, looked down with alarm. “My boobs,” she gasped, “have developed a harm.”
She fainted at once on a beanbag with fringe. Jerry bled on the rug and began not to cringe, for once you are bitten by one of these nips, you stop being flirty and button your lips.
Well, doctors came running with notebooks and pens. They peered and they prodded those breasteses and then…
They said, “This is serious. This calls for a chart. We’ll name it in Latin to make a good start.”
So they called it Dentata Mammaria Chill, which sounded expensive and looked good on a bill. But the papers called out, with much better quips, “Beware in cold weather! These are KILLER NIPS!”
Then everyone panicked. That’s what people do best. They panic in kitchens. They panic half-dressed. They panicked in diners, in schools, and in malls. They held urgent hearings in echoey halls.
The mayor said, “Ban them!”
The governor, “Tax!”
A priest said, “It’s Satan!”
A vegan blamed snacks.
A scientist muttered, “It might be the smog.”
A florist said, “Nonsense. It’s clearly the fog.”
The women were mixed. Some were shocked. Some were pleased. Some said, “At last. Now men might say please.” Some knitted warm covers. Some stayed near the stove. Some strutted through winter with startling new nerve.
For once in the history of bras and lace, a man had to think before lunging his face. He’d pause in the parlor. He’d measure the room. He’d ask, “Is it drafty?”
He’d glance at the gloom.
One fellow named Stanley invented a guard, a little tin muzzle both pointy and hard. He called it a Nip Cap. He sold quite a lot. But… one chilly Tuesday they all rusted shut.
The children asked questions.
The grown-ups said, “Hush.”
Which naturally caused a tremendous new rush of rumors and dares and schoolyard debates about whether the nips could detect moral states.
“Do they bite only creeps?” asked a boy in Dubuque.
“Do they hate bad cologne?” asked a man in Eau Claire.
“Do they vote?” asked a senator.
No one knew there.
A woman in Brooklyn said, “Mine only snapped at men who explained things I already had mapped.”
That sounded delightful, but tests did not show that politics mattered to bite force or snow. By spring they all vanished. The teeth tucked away. The nips went back being just nips, come what may. And people forgot, as they usually do, all the odd little horrors they recently knew.
But then came November. The wind gave a hiss. A woman near Yonkers felt something amiss. She shivered. She gasped. She looked down in dismay. Two tiny white smiles were coming her way.
And so it goes, friend. That’s the tale of the nips. Of the teeth in the cold and the men’s backward flips. The world is quite odd. It gets odder still. You think you know boobs. Then they grow a small grill.
So keep yourself warm when the weather turns mean. Trust blankets and radiators. Flannel. Canteen. For there are some things that seem sweet in the light but get clever and hungry when chilly at night.
—SP
