Growing up in Queens Village in the 50’s/60’s (JHS 109, Van Buren), we used to fashion girls’ metal bobby pins into ‘bee stingers’, with a backward twist in the spring-quality steel, and set ‘just right’ (so it wouldn’t go off in your pocket), it delivered quite a painful jab when pressed on a victim’s shirt of pants. The problem, of course, was that it was an extremely close range device.