How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself

by Robert Paul Smith

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  Fold these two halves together and then fold back the two thick pieces the other way so that the folded part lies even with the bottom.

  We used to take the bottom and tear back through the thick part, to make two little tabs, one going one way, the other the other, to sort of hold the whole thing together.

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  Teachers used to take these away from us, too.

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  Then I used to make a different kind; it’s my recollection that I invented this kind, but chances are that’s just my memory, and I probably saw it in a book or learned it from another kid. Anyhow, the idea was to make a paper airplane that looked more like an airplane. You start off the same way, folding down the center and opening up, folding the two ends in.

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  Then you take the point and bend it back so that the very point evens up with the cross line.

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  Fold the whole thing over, and then fold back the two wings a little ways up from the first original center fold. Fold it back in half again and with scissors, or by tearing, make an airplane shape, like this.

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  Now fold the wings out, and fold the little tail pieces out. Make the tear and make the tab like before.

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  These fly much more like an airplane than the old kind, and you can even experiment with bending the tail pieces up to make the plane loop the loop, or one side up to make it go in a circle. Just generally, with these or with gliders that you can get at an airplane model store, to make a plane loop the loop, throw it down, to make it go in a circle and come back to you, hold it in your right hand if you’re right-handed, your left if you’re left-handed, with the bottom of the plane toward you and the wings straight up and down and sort of sweep it backhanded right across your own front.

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  There’s a way of making a helicopter, too. By the way, when I was a kid, it was clearly understood that there never would ever be a real full-size, man-carrying helicopter. It had been very carefully proven, scientifically, that it was impossible ever to make one that would get off the ground. I don’t know what happened to the scientists who proved this: maybe they met the scientist who had proved that, by all the laws of nature, it was impossible for a bee to fly. A bee just wasn’t made right to fly. I’m not making fun of scientists; it wasn’t so long ago that all the scientific theories in the world were based on the theory that it was impossible to split the atom. Well, of course. Everything is impossible until it’s done. Then whatever has been done is possible, and there’s a new thing that’s impossible.

  The helicopters we made weren’t really helicopters. They just looked something like what we now know as helicopters. They were made from a piece of paper, and they worked very much the same way as the maple wings I told you about when I was telling about polly-noses. Take a piece of stiff paper or thin cardboard, the size isn’t important, and cut it to this shape.

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  Bend the wings back, and fold over the bottom part so that the bottom part is three thicknesses thick, and glue it or staple it or paper-clip it.

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  Take this up to a high place, and let it drop.

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  If you can get a hold of a chicken or a turkey wishbone, some chewing gum, a burnt kitchen match and a rubber band, you can make a kind of silly thing. You chew this wishbone good and clean, and if you’ve got the patience, let it dry until it’s good and stiff. Chew the gum until it’s good and chewy. Take a little wad of it and stick it on the wishbone where there’s that flat place. (If you live on a tarred street and the tar gets sticky in the summer, tar is even better for this than chewing gum.5) Loop the rubber band over the two arms of the wishbone, out near the end, put a match in between the rubber band, twist it up good so that if you let it go it would whirl around to the other side of the wishbone and be stopped, only don’t let it go.

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  Stick the end of the match into the chewing gum and set the whole thing down on a table.

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  After a little while the twisted rubber band will pull the match away from the chewing gum and the whole thing will pop up in the air. Of course, you never know how long it’s going to take for the match to come loose. I’ll guarantee only one thing; it won’t ever let loose at the exact moment you’re expecting it. If you put it on the table next to your father when he’s making out his income-tax return, it should produce some interesting results. He may tell you what he did to scare his father when he was a kid, and he may even show you what his father did to him when he scared him when he was a kid.

  There are lots of other things you can do, all alone, by yourself, but these are about all I can think of right now that aren’t specialized in some way.

  I’m really serious about the library: that’s the best place to learn more. We did lots of other things when we were kids, like collecting bugs, and wild flowers, and frogs, and snakes, and stones—and in the library I promise you there will be a really expert book on each of these, and on many other subjects, written by people who’ve made a life study of those special things. There will be books about trees and radio sets and telescopes and badminton and Indian crafts and metal work, about how to make bows and arrows, how to swim, how to—oh, there’s no end. There’s even a book on how to find a how-to book.

  Some silly grownup has even written a book on how to read a book.

  But if you’ve gotten this far, I know you know how to read a book.

  There’s only one thing left to tell you: the name of this book is How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself . I understand some people get worried about kids who spend a lot of time all alone, by themselves. I do a little worrying about that, but I worry about something else even more; about kids who don’t know how to spend any time all alone, by themselves. It’s something you’re going to be doing a whole lot of, no matter what, for the rest of your lives. And I think it’s a good thing to do; you get to know yourself, and I think that’s the most important thing in the whole world.

  Index

  Acorns

  eating

  sling ammunition

  Air, pressing on leather suckers

  Airplanes, paper

  Apple whipping

  Arrows

  throwing-stick

  umbrella

  Ash tray, clamshell

  Balsa wood, boomerang

  Bark, designs in

  Baskets

  burr

  peach-pit

  Ba-voom thing

  Bees, pussy-willow

  Blackjacks

  Boat, paddle-wheel

  Bolas

  Boomerangs

  Boy Scout knives

  Bracelets, clamshell

  Bugs Fish,

  books about

  Bull-roarers

  Burrs

  Busted Umbrellas

  Button buzz saw

  Case knife

  Cats, pussy-willow

  Checkering, pencils and branches

  Cigar-box things

  boat

  fiddles

  guitars

  Clamshells

  Cornstalk fiddle

  Cross-boomerang

  Dandelions

  Darts

  airplane

  needle

  Feathers, arrow

  Fence, pussy-willow cats

  Fiddles

  cigar-box

  cornstalk

  Fish, peach-pit

  Grass, squawker

  Guitars, cigar-box

  Gun, rubber-band

  Hairpins, slingshot

  Handbook for the Curious, Howes

  Handker
chief blackjacks

  Handkerchief parachutes

  Handles, slingshot

  Helicopter, paper

  Horse chestnuts shining

  Howes, Paul Griswold

  Ice pick

  Indoor boomerangs

  Jewel weed

  Jig saw

  Jumping thing

  Killers

  Knives

  Boy Scout

  Leather

  books about

  David sling

  slingshot

  Leather sucker

  Library

  bee books

  getting books from

  Lollipop sticks, slingshot ammunition

  Maple seeds

  Matchbook, boomerang

  Miniature slingshot

  Mumbly-peg

  how named

  Munjigo-peg

  Music, things that make

  Needle dart

  Nuts, slingshot ammunition

  Oilstone

  Orange-crate wood, boomerang

  Paddle-wheel boat

  Paper

  airplanes

  helicopter

  pussy-willow bees

  wings

  Paste

  Peach-pit things

  Pencils

  knife work on

  names on

  slingshot ammunition

  spool tank

  Penknife

  Pin piano

  Pistol, rubber-band

  Pocketknives

  Polly-noses

  Pussy willows

  Risk, mumbly-peg

  Rubber bands

  boomerang

  gun

  jumping thing

  paddle-wheel boat

  slingshot

  spool slingshot

  spool tank

  Scout knives

  Sharpening knives

  Shoestring, horse chestnuts

  Slice the Cheese, mumbly-peg and other

  Slice the Ham

  Slingshots

  David kind

  fork kind

  old-fashioned kind

  spool kind

  Spool slingshot

  Spool tank

  Squawker

  Suction cup

  Teachers

  airplanes

  boomerangs

  miniature slingshots

  Trash cans, stuff from

  Turtles, peach-pit

  Umbrella bows and arrows

  Walking sticks, making

  Whipping apples

  Whittling

  Willow whistle

  Wishbone, jumping thing

  Wood-and-wire carrying handles

  Wood fork, slingshot

  Yo-yo

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are due my wife, who drew the pictures, and my sons Dan and Joe, who helped me make all the things in the book for her to draw.

  1 The other night a friend of mine, who lived only six blocks away when we were kids, told me that he used to make the washers out of the paraffin that used to be on the top of jars of homemade jam. Now he tells me!

  2 Now I’m sure I could do it right now, because I just did. I went out in the front yard and set it up just the way the picture goes and the third time I tried, I did it. I’m still not sure I could do it right this minute.

  3 It has been brought to my attention that some kids don’t know how to make paste any more, that they think paste is only something that you can buy. With us, it was the other way around. We knew how to make it, and later on found out it was possible to buy it. Well, I’m not going to draw any pictures or give any careful instructions here. You take flour and water and mix it until it’s paste, and if you have some salt you can put it in, too. I don’t know if the salt does any good, but we figured we had nothing to lose. It wasn’t our salt.

  4 I hear tell hairpins are pretty rare now. Maybe you can make them out of bobby-pins, but I don’t know about this.

  5 That stuff called silly putty works, too, but that costs money.

  Copyright © 1958 by Robert Paul Smith

  Copyright © renewed 1986 by the Estate of Robert Paul Smith

  First published by W. W. Norton and Company 1958 Published by Tin House Books 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2601 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

  Parental Advisory: This book describes activities that may be dangerous if not done exactly as directed or that may be inappropriate for young children. All of these activities should be carried out under adult supervision only. The author’s estate and the publisher expressly disclaim all liability for any injury or damages that may result from engaging in the activities contained in this book.

  Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and New York, New York Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, 1700 Fourth St., Berkeley, CA 94710, www.pgw.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Robert Paul.

  How to do nothing with nobody all alone by yourself / by Robert Paul

  Smith.—Tin House Books ed.

  p. cm.

  Originally published: New York : Norton, 1958.

  eISBN : 978-0-982-50484-0

  1. Amusements. I. Title.

  GV1203.S63 2010

  793—dc22

  2009037103