I do not remember any particular problems with my parents during the puberty years. They do not remember them, either. The only exceptions were occasional tiffs over politics. They often centered on Tito, the lynchpin of Yugoslav political life, but sometimes they had to do with socialism in general or its Yugoslav variant, the so-called political self-government and economic self-management. My mother recalled today one such scrape, which I remember only through her previous reminiscences. I was already in highschool when she bought me a baseball cap of sorts. I must have been fifteen or sixteen, but certainly not older. I saw the cap in a store and fell in love with it. It was very unusual back then. I had to have it and she got I for me. It was not easy, she assures me. One day I returned home without the cap. A friend was with me. When my mother asked me where was my cap, I told her that someone in school had stolen it from me. Then I started railing against socialism, where such caps were in high demand but short supply. A joke of a system, in short. She was appalled. She ordered me to stop speaking so disrespectfully about the social order, but I got angrier and angrier. I was ever more eloquent, too. The system was both inefficient and ineffective. It was iniquitous, as well. When she threatened to slap me if I did not stop, I dared her. I even stuck my neck out. Then she slapped me in front of my friend. Mortified, she went to the kitchen, where she pretended she had something important to do, and my friend and I went to my room. I must have been stunned by the turn of events. This was the first time she or anyone else had slapped me. A minute or two later, I went to the kitchen to apologize. My mother was in tears. She was sorry, too. She was especially contrite about punishing me in front of someone else. But the fact remains that I got slapped because I was blaspheming against socialism.