Knots in My Yo-Yo String Read Online Free PDF Page A

ceiling, and roaring with all your might, “Phooey!”
    That kind of bad.
    Let me tell you something about the Good Boy: Just because he doesn’t get into trouble doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate trouble. I know I did. I understood what a boring world this would be without the troublemakers. And so I was a big fan of Leonard Wilfong, whowas always getting into trouble. I didn’t exactly stand up and applaud when Leonard did something bad, but I gave him my undivided attention, and if I thought I could get away with it, I laughed.
    To the Bad Boy, that’s the reward: laughter. It’s the payoff of a deal that is never spoken of, never written down, yet is understood perfectly by the kids in class. It’s as if back on the first day of first grade, all the boys had a secret meeting and one of them was voted to be Bad Boy. He—in our case, Leonard Wilfong—accepted the job, along with the punishments that would surely fall to him, with the understanding that the rest of us would (1) pay attention and (2) laugh.
    And the meeting broke up and Leonard Wilfong went forth and did outrageous things, and we laughed. Neither Leonard nor the rest of us understood this, but in a sense we were laughing at ourselves, for Leonard Wilfong was the embodiment of the Bad Boy in all of us. Leonard did what we did not have the nerve to do. Leonard did not have the same fears we had. He feared spelling tests and long division and report cards. He did not fear trouble. He did not fear rules. And though we did not envy Leonard Wilfong his punishments or his bad grades, we absolutely envied him his recklessness. We respected him as the representative of that which was secret in ourselves. We saluted him with our attention and our laughter.
    When the teacher wasn’t looking.

    At age 6 (1947): a Good Boy in the making.
    So if you want an interesting Hartranft Elementary School autobiography from those days, go see Leonard Wilfong. As for me, I have already mentioned the fifty-yard dash and my spur-song serenade. Only four other interesting things happened to me in grade school:
    1. Second grade. This did not happen directly to me but to a calf. Mrs. Care, our teacher, lived on a farm. One spring day she took the whole class there for a visit. While jumping into the hay in the barn, Roger Adelman landed on a pitchfork and had to go to thehospital. Ordinarily, that would have been the highlight of the day, but out in the barnyard something even more interesting was happening.
    A mother cow and her calf were hanging around just inside the fence, close enough for some of us to reach out and touch. Then, as we watched in amazement, the mother—who, you must understand, was a lot taller than her offspring—backed up to the calf and pooped on its head. Until Mrs. Care finally wiped it off, the plop just stayed there, like a brown beret. Was it my imagination, or did the calf really have an expression on its face, as if to say, “Hey, Ma—wha’d I do?”
    2. Second grade. We had a student teacher from West Chester University. Though she was careful not to give me preferential treatment, I remember feeling proud and special. Why? She was my cousin, Dolly.
    3. Third grade. I got sick with a kidney ailment. I was in the hospital for ten days and out of school for two months. My mother tells me that in the hospital I put on a brave front. She says that whenever she and my father visited me, I chatted away happily with them. Then, the second they left the room, I started to cry. My mother found this out from the nurses. Personally, I don’t remember. My mother also says they gave me so many needles in the hospital that my rear end looked like a pincushion. I don’t remember that either. As a reward for all the needles each night, a smiling nurse in a candy-striped uniform brought me a milkshake. That I remember.
    4. Sixth grade. In early spring of that year the two sixth grades were brought together for a series of spelling bees. Since I won more