 Why doesn’t Wayne like his parents?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962. Wayne, unseen, sneered down from the head of the stairs. His slim mother with nervously polite smiles and voice fluttering, assuring the old man by her frailty that he was big in the world. They were squareheads one and all, marking moron time in a gray dream. What do we know about adolescent trauma and like that? Squareheads going around either unconscious or with eyes looking dead from the millennium in the office waiting to retire into limbo. "What, son?" his old man said uneasily. He was still laughing as he whoomed the Olds between the pale dead glow of houses and roared up the ramp onto the Freeway. He strode under a sign reading Public Youth Center No. 947 and walked casually to the reception desk, where a thin man with sergeant's stripes and a pansy haircut looked out of a pile of paperwork. "Thanks, sarge dear," Wayne said and took the elevator up to the Armory. "Hold your teeth, pop," Wayne said, coolly and slowly lighting a cigarette. It's a big city and you're starting late. You can get a cat, not a mouse, and some babes are clever hellcats in a dark alley." "A corporal with no hair and still a counterboy. He checked them on a receipt ledger, while Wayne examined the weapons, broke open the revolver, twirled the cylinder and pushed cartridges into the waiting chamber. It had a head shaped like a grinning bear. If he didn't watch himself he'd begin feeling like a pea among bowling balls. "Wayne Seton," said Captain Jack as if he were discussing something in a bug collection. His legs seemed sheathed in lead as he bit inwardly at shrinking fear the way a dog snaps at a wound. You big overblown son, he thought, I'll show you but good who is a punk. A blade snicked from the end and stopped an inch from Wayne's nose. "Your beast is primed and waiting at the Four Aces Club on the West Side. A copcar stopped Wayne as he started over the bridge, out of bright respectable neon into the murky westside slum over the river. Wayne waved the pass card, signed by Captain Jack, under the cop's quivering nose. He turned off into a rat's warren of the inferiors. Wayne's fearful exhilaration increased as he cruised with bated breath through the dark mazes of streets and rickety tenements crawling with the shadows of mysterious promise.
 He feels that they are soft and stupid, that they’ve given up on what life has to offer.
 His parents broke out when they were much younger than the age he is now, and he is embarrassed by this.  His parents want to keep him from breaking out, knowing that the horrors Wayne will face are too much for him.  No reason. Wayne is a bad egg and enjoys tormenting them.  He feels that they are soft and stupid, that they’ve given up on what life has to offer.