The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

13

“SO I SAT THERE, looking at Mr. Grundtvig,” said Matthew, between bites of the tuna fish sandwich I had given him, “and I said to myself, ‘This is it. Everything depends on this.’ There I was. I was actually in the predicament that the man in the rowboat was in. Grundtvig began tapping his pencil on his pad and he looked up at me. As soon as he looked at me, I knew what to do. I gave him the kind of story you would give him! You know what I told him happened at the end? The guy was carried off by a mermaid! They lived happily ever after. I couldn’t believe it. I heard myself saying all this, but I couldn’t believe it.”     I couldn’t believe it either. I sat looking at Matthew, who went on with his story, filling in the details, laughing, and pounding the table with his hand. My heart sank. The more he elaborated on the story, the surer I became that we would be going our separate ways. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Matthew what I had done.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” and “Take the Long Way Home,” the first seven novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

12

AFTER MATTHEW AND I had put in a couple of weeks in the third grade, Mrs. Barber got it into her head that Matthew should skip a grade. I told my mother that if Matthew was going to skip a grade, then I wanted to skip a grade too. She consulted Mr. Beaker, who endorsed the idea at once.     Matthew and I were put through a series of intelligence tests. For three mornings, we sat in a tiny room near the administrative office, alone, at two desks set as far apart from each other as the room would allow, with the door of the room open so that the principal’s secretary could keep an eye on us. At lunch time we would compare our answers and speculate about whether we had done well enough to meet the standards required of a student in the fourth grade.     When the intelligence tests were over, we were put through a psychological test. Both of us knew that this was important. We had heard the principal, Mr. Horne, remark to his secretary, Mrs. Torelli, while we were at work on the tests one morning, that he had no doubt that we were smart enough for fourth grade, but that, frankly, he wondered whether we were mature enough to fit in with the other fourth-graders.     We had to be tested individually, since most of the test was administered orally by Mr. Grundtvig, a fat psychologist in a brown suit who had been brought in especially for the purpose. Matthew went into the room first. He was in there for about an hour and a half. I waited in Mr. Horne’s office. When Matthew was finished, he was whisked away by Mrs. Torelli before I was summoned.     I spent a while looking at pictures on cards and describing them for Mr. Grundtvig. I spent a while describing what I imagined fourth grade would be like. I spent a while describing what I imagined fourth graders would be like. I spent quite a while telling Mr. Grundtvig about my relatives and friends, and he took lots of notes.     “Well, Peter,” said Mr. Grundtvig. “We’ve had quite a lot of fun talking, I think. Now we’re going to play a kind of game. Do you like games?”     I was going to say no, which was the truth, but I was sure that would be the wrong answer, so I said, “Oh, yeah!”     “Well, good. This is a storytelling game.” He picked up a booklet and leafed through it. “I’ll read the beginning of a story, and you finish it for me, all right?”     “All right,” I said.     “Here we go,” said Mr. Grundtvig. “One day a man, in the middle of his life, no longer young, decided that it would be nice to row a boat across a bay. He hadn’t rowed a boat in some time. When he got to the very middle of the bay, he was very tired. His hands were sore. His arms were aching. Sweat ran into his eyes. He looked around. The water was murky and gray. The man was as far from where he had started out as he was from where he wanted to go. He didn’t know what to do.”     Mr. Grundtvig closed the booklet and looked at me. “Well, Peter,” he said, “what do you think will happen next?”     I felt very much as the man in the boat must have felt. I was midway between the third grade and the fourth grade. What I said now might be the one thing that sent me either back to the third grade or ahead to the fourth grade. I didn’t care too much which happened, as long as I wound up where Matthew did. If he made it into the fourth grade, then I wanted to be there too. If he had to stay in the third grade, then I wanted to stay there.     Mr. Grundtvig cleared his throat. He had been looking at his notepad, holding his pencil ready. He looked up at me and tapped the pencil point on the pad. “Well, Peter?” he said.     I made the decision in an instant. The way to be sure of winding up where Matthew wound up was to answer as Matthew would. I pulled a long face. “It would be nice if this story had a happy ending,” I said. Mr. Grundtvig began writing at once. “But it will not. I mean, in a way, we’re all like the man in the rowboat—tired, confused, miserable—”

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” and “Take the Long Way Home,” the first seven novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

     The very last Happy and Hapless cartoon that was shown at the Babbington Theater is the one that remains sharpest in my memory.     After a number of mishaps and close calls, Hapless, in his chubby-man incarnation, found himself in a rowboat, rowing across a gray bay. A storm was coming up. Already the bay was choppy, and Hapless was struggling to row into the wind. He was having a terrible time of it, and his expression showed the strain that he was under. Over the sound of the wind and the waves, we began to hear Happy’s chuckling, building gradually, coming as if from behind all of us kids, as if Happy were sitting up in the balcony somewhere, where the bigger kids sat to neck and smoke.     Poor Hapless began to hear it too, and he turned toward us, stopped rowing, and looked at us with a sadness that we didn’t recognize from earlier episodes. There was a scattering of nervous laughter, and all of us expected something to happen to change Hapless’s situation, if not for the better, at least to make it different, at least to get this horrible look off his face. But nothing happened. Hapless just sat there, drifting, looking out at us with misery in his eyes while Happy’s chuckle filled the theater.     Finally, Hapless spoke. “I don’t want to do this any more,” he said. The sadness in his voice was bottomless.     Kids began squirming in their seats and looking at one another. I looked at Matthew and laughed a tentative laugh, as if to say, “This is funny, right? You get the joke, don’t you—even though I don’t?”     Matthew gave me the sardonic grin that he had, as our friendship had grown, added to his sneer and his impassive look of disappointment.     On the screen, the wind suddenly died, and the bay was calm, though the sky was still dark. Hapless sat in the rowboat, drifting. “I don’t want to do this any more,” he repeated, and right before the bulging eyes of a hundred kids, he and his rowboat began to melt into the water of the bay.     It took only a few seconds, I suppose, for Hapless to disperse himself. The water lay there, undulating slowly, under a featureless gray sky. We all sat in silence for a while, and I heard some blubbering, but then Gene Autry came onto the screen, smiling and singing, and the boys and girls seemed to forget Hapless at once.     I didn’t. I realized that I had spent part of every Saturday afternoon for an entire summer laughing at Hapless’s misfortunes. The thought made me miserable.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” and “Take the Long Way Home,” the first seven novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

11

DURING THE SUMMER that followed second grade, I saw Matthew nearly every Saturday. My mother would drive me to Mrs. Barber’s shop in the morning and leave me there for the day. At noon, Matthew and I would eat lunch upstairs, where he and his mother lived, and after lunch we would walk to the Babbington Theater, which was only a block and a half down Main Street, for the Saturday matinee.     Throughout that summer, the theater ran a series of animated cartoons before the feature. These cartoons starred two remarkable hippos. One was a kind and pleasant-looking sort, grandfatherly and a little stodgy, who drew animated cartoons for a living. This hippo was never named, but I used to think of him as Happy, because he seemed quite content and generally unruffled. Each episode began with Happy Hippo at his drawing board, puffing on his pipe and working on a fresh ink drawing of his lead character, a younger, comical, bumbling, and mischievous hippo who was also unnamed, but should have been called Hapless. As soon as Happy had drawn him, Hapless began to romp around the drawing paper, and the adventure got under way. Whatever his adventure might be in any one episode, it shared with all the others some features worth noting.

1. All the difficulties that Hapless fell into were concocted by Happy. It was he who drew the cliffs that Hapless fell over, he who made doorways too small for Hapless to get through, he who made Hapless’s roof leak.2. We were continually reminded that Hapless was a cartoon character made of ink. Sometimes, when Hapless was in a tight spot, his face drooped sadly, and then his body began to droop, and he slowly ran down into a puddle. Then from this puddle he emerged in a new form. In fact, although he began each episode as a hippopotamus, he spent most of the time in other forms, and he returned to being a hippopotamus only at the end. Often he was a chubby man in a derby hat who drove a ridiculous little car. When Hapless, as the chubby man in the derby hat, was stuck in a traffic jam, for example, he and his ridiculous little car melted into an inky puddle, and then a balloon rose from the puddle and suspended below it was a basket, in which Hapless drifted above the traffic. Of course, an enormous hawk was soon pecking at the balloon and in a minute or two Hapless was falling toward earth at his wit’s end.3. When Hapless really got into trouble, he appealed to Happy for help. In the basket dangling below the deflated balloon, for instance, when he was so beside himself with fear that he couldn’t think of a metamorphosis that would save him, he got down on his knees and clasped his hands together and looked out toward us with a beseeching look. As if a camera were drawing back, the image of Hapless receded on the screen, and we saw the edges of the drawing paper, then the drawing table, Happy’s workroom, and finally Happy himself, chuckling, amused by the predicament that Hapless had gotten into.4. Sometimes, Happy simply picked up his pen and drew some help for Hapless. When Hapless was falling in the basket of the deflated balloon, Happy drew a kindly herring gull who swooped out of the corner of the page and plucked Hapless from the basket. (Later, however, the herring gull set Hapless down in another pickle. As I recall, the gull deposited him on a tiny desert island.)5. At other times, Happy helped Hapless by drawing a likeness of himself on the paper, joining Hapless in his adventure or misadventure. Whenever he did so, he at once became as inept as Hapless, and both of them were soon up to their necks in trouble. Happy, however, always had an out. He would draw a sheet of drawing paper around the source of their trouble—a charging lion, say—and then draw a drawing table and so on, until he had reproduced his workroom on the paper, with the predicament trapped within the edges of the new piece of drawing paper, while he and Hapless were safely outside it. Then he and Hapless would shake hands, and Happy would wink at the viewer, and the cartoon would be over.6. And at still other times, Happy helped Hapless by drawing for him a bottle of ink and a pen. Hapless would grab the pen, dip it in the ink, and quickly draw something to help himself. Invariably, the devices that Hapless created to help himself turned out to be two-edged swords. In one episode, Hapless, a bumbling cowhand at the time, was being pursued by a charging herd of cattle. Happy drew him a bottle of ink and a pen, and Hapless drew a door in the middle of the Western vista. He opened the door, stepped through it, slammed it, and left the herd of cattle behind. He wiped his hand across his forehead, wiping away the sweat of fear, and breathed a sigh of relief. Then he looked around and saw that he was standing on a tiny platform over a bayou full of snapping alligators.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” and “Take the Long Way Home,” the first seven novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

10

THE COPY OF The Amazing Randy the Unbreakable Record that Matthew gave me was badly worn. Matthew must have played it often. I had to strain to hear Randy through the hissing and popping on the first side. The second side was marked with deep gouges that looked to me as if they had been deliberately made, perhaps with the point of a compass. I couldn’t play that side at all.     When I had recovered from the chicken pox and was allowed to go outside, I smashed Randy with a brick and buried him in the back yard. It seemed the decent thing to do.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” and “Take the Long Way Home,” the first seven novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

I GOT THE CHICKEN POX about halfway through the second grade, and I had to stay in bed wearing flannel pajamas with the ends of the sleeves sewn shut so that I couldn’t scratch my vesicles. One day, Matthew’s mother drove him to my house. My mother came into the room with a package for me, a gift from Matthew. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, but I could see from the shape that it was a record. On the wrapping paper, Matthew had printed a note to me.

     The record was called The Amazing Randy the Unbreakable Record. I was feverish and uncomfortable and bored, so miserable that my mother’s hand on my forehead was almost intolerable, and I couldn’t manage even to tell her to thank Matthew for the gift. My mother told me that she would play the record and let me listen to it alone.     “Call me when the first side is over,” she said. She closed the door and left me with the voice of Randy, a voice that I can hear as I write this sentence.     “Ouch! Oh my! That’s always a shock. No matter how carefully a person sets the needle down on me, I always feel a little pinprick. Well, hello there! I’m Randy. What’s your name? (pause) What was that again? (pause) Oh! Now I’ve got it. That’s one of my favorite names! Well, as I said, I’m Randy. I hope you like my name as much as I like yours.     “Da-da da-dum-dum-dum—     I’m Randy the Record,     Now what do you think of that?     I’m Randy the Record;     I’m round and black and flat.     “Ho-ho! Say, that was fun, wasn’t it? I have rather a good voice, I think. Of course, as the years pass, my voice won’t stay sweet and clear. It’s going to get worn and scratchy. Well, that’s life. Listen—you can help me last a little longer, but you’ll have to treat me carefully: never touch my top or bottom with your fingers, only my edges; and don’t go thrusting any pencils, knives, or other weapons into my hole. If you do, I could be badly maimed and slip on the spindle, which woooould maaake meeeaaa saaoound lahhhk theeis.     “Ha, ha, ha! Well, that may sound like fun to you, but I’d be horribly embarrassed if I sounded like that, and you’d get tired of listening to it after a while, and if you weren’t feeling well the sound might make you want to throw up, so don’t play around with my hole, okay? Another thing: watch out for the needle. If you set it down hard or bump it or stomp around the room and make it jump, it will gaareeeahgeeeech! Uh! Jesus Christ! There’s nothing worse! You know how bad chalk screeching on a blackboard sounds—well imagine what it feels like to the blackboard! And then a scratch like that will make me stick in that spot, so that when the needle gets there you’ll find me saying the same thing over and over and (click) over and over and (click) over and over and (click) over and over and (click) over again, which would be a miserable way for me to end my days and could drive you mad. So you see that it isn’t only for my own good that I tell you these things. But if you treat me right I’ll give you years of listening pleasure.     “Oh, you do right by me,     And I’ll do right by you.     Bo-bo ba deedle-de-dee,     Boop-boop ba doodle-de-doo!     “Ha ha! Sure hope you liked that one! Listen, there’s one thing I almost forgot. Every once in a while, give me a little wipe with a damp cloth, will you? Not wet, just damp—and not too cold—oh, and not too hot. And listen, when the time comes that I’m just too old and worn to sound halfway decent, don’t embarrass me by playing me for your friends, okay? I couldn’t stand that. I’ve got my pride. Just smash me on a brick or something and tell your mother that the kid next door did it. Promise? Go on, let me hear you promise. (pause) Thanks. Thanks.     “Now let me do something for you. Get yourself into a comfortable position and tell me about everything that’s bothering you. Tell me your hopes and dreams, your fears and worries, your hideous urges, and I’ll listen. I’ll listen sympathetically. I’ll listen to you without getting tired. Maybe you think that all the other kids are having a lot more fun than you are. Their mothers and fathers never make them do the things that yours make you do. They don’t have any chores to do around the house. Their daddies like taking out the garbage so much that they always want to do it themselves. I know how it is. I’m on your side. The other kids are happy as clams, and you’re miserable. Don’t let it get you down. When you’re feeling really bad, just put old Randy on your record player, and when you hear me saying ‘shhhhh-click, shhhhh-click, shhhhh-click,’ you’ll know that it’s old Randy’s way of letting you know that he hears you, he understands you, he agrees with you. When you’ve had your say, just turn me over. Now go right ahead and tell me aaaall about it. Shhhhh-click, shhhhh-click, shhhhh-click—”

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” and “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” the first six novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

8

MATTHEW AND I WERE THE BEST READERS in Mrs. Castile’s class, and she let us gallop through all the anthologies that the school had on hand. When reading time came around, Matthew and I would go down to the boiler room, where we had a couple of chairs and desks set up, and read together. At that time, it must have been the fashion to think of reading—or at least of learning to read—as a journey, judging from the great number of anthologies with titles derived from roads, features of roads, and roadside attractions. Matthew and I read our way through Bridges and Tunnels, Highways and Byways, Detours and Roadblocks, Culverts and Sewers, Sidewalks and Gutters, Crosswalks and Stoplights, and Motels and Diners.     At first, the atmosphere at these boiler-room sessions was tense. Matthew and I faced each other across our desks and read at each other. We spat out the answers to the questions, and we disagreed on the answers to all but the most trivial of them. But as the year wore on, I developed a grudging admiration for him, admiration that was mixed with pity and a strong desire to make him laugh, or at least smile. For his part, Matthew actually seemed to like me, though he continued to shake his head at some of my ideas. Matthew and I, I realized sometime in the spring, had become friends, after a fashion.     At the end of the school year, on the last day, when Matthew and I were carrying our chairs up from the boiler room, he said to me, “Peter, I want to ask you something, and I don’t want you to laugh.”     “All right,” I said.     “Are we friends?” he asked.     “Yes,” I said. “I think so.”     “Then tell me something.”     “Yeah?”     “Why are you happy all the time?” he asked.     “I’m not happy all the time,” I said.     “Well then, why are you happy most of the time?”     “I don’t know,” I answered. It was an honest answer.     “Do you think I’ll be happy someday?” he asked.     I looked at him. He wasn’t looking at me. I thought of lying, but I didn’t.     “No,” I said.     We didn’t say anything more to each other that day, and I didn’t see Matthew again until September. I discovered, however, that he had infected me with a sympathetic melancholy that lasted well into the summer.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” and “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” the first six novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

“THE FOX WAS SAD at the beginning,” said Matthew, “because there was no reason for him to be happy. The clam was happy because he was a jerk. The fox was angry with the clam because he couldn’t stand to be around jerks. The fox wasn’t sad at the end because he was dead. And the clam will stay happy as long as he’s a jerk.” He looked hard at me. “But if he ever wises up, he’ll be as miserable as the fox.”     Sitting next to Matthew was Mary Elizabeth Patterson. Mary Elizabeth could make a cloudy day sunny. She was a small girl with slender arms and short brown hair. Whenever I saw her in the morning, outside, before school started, she was smiling and full of things to say. When she smiled, she showed a lot of teeth. She had long, pointed canines that I thought were awfully cute. Before the day began, Mary Elizabeth and I would spend a few minutes chatting happily about the amusing things our parents had done the night before. I was quite contentedly in love with her, and I basked in the certainty that my love was reciprocated. On this day she was wearing a yellow dress with a full skirt, white anklets, and patent-leather shoes. She had been squirming on her chair throughout Matthew’s reading. While he was answering the questions, she squirmed on her chair with more impatience and waved her hand in the air. When Matthew finished, I said, “Mary Elizabeth, do you want to say something?” I expected her to tell Matthew to stop being a Gloomy Gus, or words to that effect.     “I just wanted to say that I agree with Matthew,” she said.     On the tip of my tongue were the words “I think you’re right, Mary Elizabeth.” I was even leaning forward a bit in my chair to encourage her. I caught myself before I spoke, and then I had to catch myself again before I fell off the chair. Mary Elizabeth went right on.     “I think this story shows that you just can’t win,” she said. She was looking at Matthew while she spoke, and the look in her eyes was admiration. I had to say something.     “Well,” I said, “I guess you can’t win them all. That’s what my father says.”     “Oh, that’s just silly, Peter,” said Mary Elizabeth.     Darkness seemed to descend in the cloakroom. Mary Elizabeth and Matthew were staring into each other’s eyes. They looked perfectly miserable and perfectly compatible.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” and “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” the first six novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” and “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” the first six novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

7

MATTHEW AND I KEPT OUR DISTANCE throughout kindergarten, but we wound up together in Mrs. Castile’s class in the first grade. We were in competition from the first day. Mrs. Castile asked me to distribute copies of Along Sunny Paths, the primer that we would be reading. Matthew looked through his copy and marched right up to Mrs. Castile’s desk with it.     “Mrs. Castile,” he said, “I don’t want to cause any trouble, but I’d rather not waste my time reading this book.”     “Oh?” said Mrs. Castile.     “Yeah,” said Matthew. “You see, I can already read.”     “Isn’t that nice!” said Mrs. Castile. “Maybe you’ll help some of the other boys and girls learn to read.”     “Maybe,” said Matthew, “but I don’t want to have to read this junk.” He tried to hand the book to her.     “Matthew,” said Mrs. Castile. “This book is not ‘junk.’ All of these books are brand new, and there are lots of nice stories in them.”     “Mrs. Castile,” said Matthew, “the stories in here are too simple. They don’t give you anything to think about. You know what I mean. Here, look at this one—‘Quack, Duck, Quack.’ That might be interesting for—”     He turned toward the classroom, looking for someone to use as an example of the “Quack, Duck, Quack” level of mental development. I was on my way back to Mrs. Castile’s desk with the extra books. Matthew pointed at me and sneered.     “—for Peter. In fact, he’ll probably love it, but it’s just too simple for me.”     “We’ll see, Matthew,” said Mrs. Castile. “For now, I’m afraid that you will have to read the stories in Along Sunny Paths with the rest of the boys and girls.”     “I knew it was no use,” said Matthew, when he passed me on his way back to his seat. “I’m supposed to read about the duckies with the rest of you nitwits.”     For a moment, I was going to hit him with my copy of Along Sunny Paths, but I thought better of it. I didn’t want to have to go through another of those apologies.     Matthew could, in fact, read very well. So could I, and four other children in Mrs. Castile’s class could read well, too. Mrs. Castile gave the six of us another book to read, Down Dark Alleys, and had us gather in the cloakroom during reading time to read and discuss the stories on our own. Each day she would appoint one of us as leader. I was the leader on the day that we read a story called “The Happy Clam.”     “Today we’re going to read a story called ‘The Happy Clam,’” I said, by way of introduction. Then, emulating Mrs. Castile, I said, “Now let’s see who will read the story for us.” I looked around, pretending to choose someone, but in fact I had already decided to choose Matthew. “Matthew,” I said, “why don’t you read for us?”

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* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” and “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” the first six novellas in Little Follies.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.