Being Teddy Roosevelt Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I’ve been thinking. I don’t really need all my old video games.”
    Riley almost fell off his chair. He made a small, strangled sound of surprise into the phone.
    “Well, I don’t. I mean, it’s not like Gandhi had dozens of video games. He didn’t even have
pants
. I don’t play with half of my games anymore, anyway. My mom’d be thrilled if I got rid of them.”
    “But what would
I
sell?”
    If Grant sold his video games, Grant would make money, not Riley. And Grant didn’t need the money, Riley did.
    “You could help me with the sale, like make the signs or something, and we could split the money,” Grant offered.
    Riley’s heart soared. “Do you mean it?”
    “Sure. It’ll be the video game sale of the century.”
    That week, Grant and Riley told everyone at school about their yard sale. And Riley spent all Friday evening making signs on pieces of cardboard cut up from discarded cartons he found in the recycling bin, while jazz music blared on the radio.
    GREAT VIDEO GAME SALE
EVERYTHING MUST GO!
    “Everything doesn’t really need to go,” Riley explained to his mother. “That’s just a thing people put on yard sale signs.”
    First thing on Saturday morning, Riley biked around Grant’s neighborhood, putting up the signs, while Grant organized the games on two tables in his front yard. Grant’s mom donated free cookies and lemonade.
    To Riley’s amazement, their first customer was Erika. She rode up on her bike in queenly fashion. Riley wondered if she’d arrive at the biography tea wearing an old-fashioned dress, with one of those ruffly things around her neck, like Queen Elizabeth wore in pictures. He couldn’t imagine Erika wearing a ruffly thing
or
a dress.
    “I love video games,” Erika announced. She started sorting through the first pile.
    “There are no queens in any of them,” Grant pointed out apologetically.
    “That’s okay,” Erika said. “It’s not that much fun being a queen.”
    Grant and Riley exchanged glances.
    “You know how I told you that Queen Elizabeth’s father beheaded Queen Elizabeth’s mother? Well, when she was grown up, Queen Elizabeth had her one true love, the Earl of Essex, beheaded. She had to do it for political reasons. But it broke her heart to do it.”

    Riley bet it didn’t bother her one millionth as much as it bothered the Earl of Essex.
    Kids from school trickled in throughout the morning. Toward lunch, Sophie came with her mother and her brother. Sophie wasn’t wearing a blindfold or earplugs.
    “Do you have anything besides video games?” Sophie asked as her brother greedily pawed through the remaining piles on the table.
    “A trumpet,” Grant said hopefully.
    Sophie turned toward her mother. “Can I get a trumpet? I’d love to be able to play piano, violin, flute,
and
trumpet.”
    “I was just kidding,” Grant told her. Sophie looked disappointed.
    Riley remembered a question he had been meaning to ask Sophie. “How could Helen Keller use sign language if she couldn’t see the signs?”
    “Her teacher did the motions in her hand,” Sophie explained. “And for reading books, she used Braille. She learned to talk, too, but that was really hard, because she could never hear what she sounded like.”
    Sophie straightened the pile of games her brother had been looking through. She straightened the pile of game magazines, too. “Everything was hard for Helen Keller,” she said.
    Riley thought about that for a minute. Lots of things had been hard for Teddy Roosevelt. And for Queen Elizabeth, and for Gandhi.
    Maybe nobody’s life was easy. At least, nobody who got to be the star of a biography.
Riley O’Rourke: The Boy Who Had No Problems Whatsoever
. Who would want to read that one? “Obstacles overcome” was one of the main topics Mrs. Harrow wanted them to include in their reports. Without that, the reports would be pretty boring.
    Of course, one of the biggest obstacles in Riley’s life right now was writing a report