by Max Shulman
Don’t ask me to explain it. I still don’t understand it myself. Sometimes I talk to my father about it. Since he’s a doctor he’s got to have a certain minimum intelligence, but he doesn’t understand it either. Neither does my mother, but of course she isn’t very smart. I don’t mean she’s an idiot or like that, but nobody goes around mistaking her for Einstein either. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m very fond of her. In fact, I love her. She’s a very kindly woman, even when she’s screaming at me, she always dresses herself neat, she can run an outboard motor, and she has many other qualities. But all the same, even when you’re attached to somebody, you don’t necessarily have to think they’re brilliant.
But to get back to girls, there were plenty of other weirdies after the bald-headed one. There was one in the lunchroom that always brought sandwiches with the crusts cut off. She was as ugly as a pan of worms, but when I saw those sandwiches with the crusts cut off, boy, I flipped! Then there was another one in penmanship class that couldn’t make a capital Q. She just couldn’t do it. The teacher spent months trying to teach her how, but she just couldn’t get it through her head. Boy, I thought she was the living end! So you can see how Red Knees Baker with her bleeding scabs had to be for me. She was in the grand tradition.
There was a lot more but I can’t remember them now. One of them smoked paper—not cigarettes, but just a piece of paper, like a page of a magazine or like that. She’d roll it up tight and light it and it would kind of smolder and she’d smoke it. I bet she smoked twenty pieces of paper a day. Then there was one that ate the sticks in popsicles. I mean she wouldn’t just eat her own stick, she’d eat yours too.
Well, that’s all I can think of now, but there were plenty more. Anyhow, you get the idea. You can tell by now that I made every mistake in the book. But all the same, I was learning. Every year I got to know more and more what to look for in a girl, and after a while I knew exactly what kind of girl I wanted. Then I found her—R.G. Spencer, the rottenest girl in town.
It’s a funny thing about R.G. Spencer. She’s been living next door to me for almost a year—the Spencers moved in after the sea gulls finally chased away Red Knees Baker and her family. (I think there’s some pigeons mixed up with those gulls—carrier pigeons or maybe stool pigeons—because the word is sure traveling about that flat roof. I mean lately there’s been gulls bringing their clams from all over North America. In fact, Mr. Nankivell picked out a gull specimen the other day which had never been seen south of Greenland before. Mr. Nankivell, I should explain, is the president of the Bird Watchers’ Society. There’s twenty-six members, all about a hundred years old, and what they do is they put on knickers and pack a box of graham crackers and come and sit on the Spencers’ lawn every day when the gulls do their dive-bombing.)
But to get back to R.G. Spencer—she’s been living next door to me for almost a year, but until a little while ago, I hardly even noticed her. It’s like my mother says—you never notice what’s right under your nose. My mother isn’t too bright but every now and then she gets off a good one.
R.G. is a real beauty. I mean when it comes to looks, she’s the living end! The only thing wrong with her, her eyes are kind of small. I don’t mean they’re tiny or like that. I just mean they’re not as big as some peoples’ eyes. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t hardly notice them. Anyhow, she’s only fourteen and her eyeballs are bound to get bigger.
She’s got a young sister Clarissa, age of ten, also with small eyeballs. Clarissa’s going to be a beauty too. I keep telling my brother Dan—he’s ten—to get next to Clarissa but he won’t listen to me. I wish I could get it through that kid’s head what he’s missing.
R.G.’s father is in the hardware game. He’s not a bad guy and I guess R.G.’s mother isn’t really bad either, but I’ll tell you the truth—I wouldn’t give you twenty-seven cents for her. She’s always putting on the dog—saying bahth and cahn’t and dahnce and like that, and when they have company she gets a maid and candles and all that kind of jazz. You’d think she has solid gold kidneys or something, the way she dogs it all the time. But all the same, she’s not a bad woman. I mean she’s not rotten like R.G.
I better start at the beginning. I told you R.G. was my next-door neighbor. But I never really noticed her until this one night when I was sitting on the front porch with my family—we sit on the front porch quite a bit—I looked next door and there was R.G. sitting on her front porch with her family—they sit on their front porch quite a bit too.
No, that’s not quite right. R.G. wasn’t sitting on her porch when I first looked over there. She came out later. First there was only her father and mother and her little sister Clarissa. She’s ten.
Over on our porch there was my father and mother and my brother Dan and me. Dan was pestering me like he always does to let him lift my bar-bells, which I won’t because he is only ten. My father—he’s a doctor—told me Dan was too little for my bar-bells, but I knew it anyhow. You have to have a good built like mine to lift 75-pound bar-bells.
But that Dan, you can’t tell him anything. “Aw, come on, Dobie,” he kept saying.
“No,” I said.
“Aw, come on, Dobie,” he said.
“No,” I said.
Then all of a sudden Mrs. Spencer, R.G.’s mother, called over and said, “Dan, why don’t you take Clarissa down to the Sweet Shoppe for ice cream? I’ll treat.”
Well, Dan looked up like he couldn’t believe his ears, and me too, because Mrs. Spencer liked Dan about as much as she liked a case of shingles. She’d been browned off at him ever since he dug up her tulip bulbs for kicks last spring.
After a minute the shock passed and Dan said, “I wouldn’t be seen with that old Clarissa for all the ice cream in the world.”
“Here, now!” said my father, giving Dan a severe look, only my father doesn’t give very good severe looks. He’s a quiet mild man.
“Daniel, that wasn’t very polite,” said my mother, also giving Dan a severe look. She gives a different kind of severe look. She smiles when she does it, but it’s a disappointed kind of smile, if you know what I mean.
“Ha, ha,” said Clarissa to Dan. “I wouldn’t go with you anyhow. You’re always so sweaty!”
“Clarissa!” said Mrs. Spencer, giving her a severe look. Mrs. Spencer is the only one in our two families that really gives severe looks. I told you about my mother and father, and as for Mr. Spencer, he never gets severe. He just keeps saying, “Yes, dear,” to Mrs. Spencer.
“Dan isn’t a bit sweaty,” said Mrs. Spencer. “I think he’s a nice clean boy. Don’t you, Rex?”
Rex is Mr. Spencer. “Yes, dear,” he said.
Now my mother and father gave each other a look because they knew that Mrs. Spencer was up to some hipky-dripky. “Alice,” said my father—Alice is Mrs. Spencer—“do I detect an ulterior motive?”
Mrs. Spencer gave a sigh. “I might as well confess,” she said. “I’m hoping to persuade Dan to go to dahncing school with Clarissa.”
“Dahncing school!” yelled Dan, giving a big hoot. “Me put on white gloves and go to dahncing school and dahnce with girls? You fracture me!”
I got a theory that Dan isn’t my real brother and they’re keeping it a secret. I think he’s a foundling left by a family of great apes.
“But, Alice,” said my mother, “surely you can find a more likely prospect than Dan.”
“No,” said Mrs. Spencer, shaking her head like she was about to bust out bawling. “I’ve talked to every boy in town. Either they’re already enrolled in dahncing school, or they’re like Dan—they just won’t go.”
“Why don’t you just send Clarissa alone?” asked my father.
“Hal” said Mrs. Spencer, giving this tragic laugh. Mr. Spencer leaned over and patted her knee. “Unfortunately,” said Mrs. Spencer, “I was so busy with the symphony drive lahst month—you remember—that I quite forgot to enroll Clarissa in dahncing school. Yesterday I called Miss Chadwick—the dahncing
mistress, you know; indeed, the only dahncing mistress—and she informed me that the number of boys and girls in her clahss was exactly even now and she could not take Clarissa unless I found a boy to go with her. Naturally, they must have an equal number of boys and girls.”
“I see,” said my mother.
“A girl must go to dahncing school!” said Mrs. Spencer, wringing her hands. “I don’t know what I shall do!”
“Why don’t you have her destroyed?” said Dan.
I was going to leave right there because if there’s anything I hate to see, it’s a guy blowing a chance to get next to a girl. But at that moment, R.G. happened to come out on her porch, and I’m here to tell you, that just stopped me cold!
I’ve got to try to write this down the way it hit me, but when something really hits you that’s when it’s hardest to put into words. Just the same, I have to try, because in a way this is what the whole book is about. How when something tremendous happens to you, you’re never quite the same again. You get bigger each time. The tremendous things that happen to me are nearly always girls, but the result is the same as if they were miracles—which in a way they are. So now I’ll try to describe this miracle—or girl to be exact.
I don’t know why, but it was like I was seeing R.G. for the first time. I mean I’d seen her a million times before, but all of a sudden, I really saw her. I don’t know what made her different; all I know is she was beautiful. She looked light and fresh and kind of glowy. You’ll think I’m nuts, but you know what I thought of when I looked at her? I thought of a time when I went camping at Candlewood Lake one summer and I woke up real early one morning and looked out of the tent and there was this young deer standing by the water not ten feet away—just standing there holding one hoof over the water. I don’t mean I only thought of the deer; I thought of all of it—the deer and the water and the dawn and all of it.
Well, I told you you’d think I was nuts, but that’s what I thought of. And then I had another crazy thought. All of a sudden I felt like I wanted to run up to my room and go through my dresser and find the thing I cared for the most and run over and give it to R.G. I think I might have done it too, only my folks were there and so were hers, and it would of looked pretty weird.
So instead I just said to her, “Hey, Helen—” this was before I found out she was rotten and started calling her R.G.—“Hey, Helen,” I said, “there’s been some talk about going down to the Sweet Shoppe for ice cream, how about it?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” she said, putting her fingertip under her chin and cocking her head kind of thoughtfully. Girls are always doing that, but to tell you the truth, it had never bothered me before, one way or the other. But when I saw R.G. do it, I flipped. I’m here to tell you I just plain flipped! I couldn’t hardly wait to get her away from all our families so I could start making time with her.
“Aw, come on,” I said, giving her a smile. I happen to have a very nice smile. I’m not bragging; it’s just something I happen to have, just like I happen to have very large hands. I mean I’m not trying to tell you I’m a Greek god or like that. I mean who ever heard of a Greek god my height?
“Well—” she said, and I could tell she was going to say yes when all of a sudden Mrs. Spencer had to open her mouth. “All the children will go for ice cream,” she said, and before anybody could say no, she had us all going down the street together. You got to give her this: she’s persistent.
Well, I wanted Dan and Clarissa along like I wanted a wart on my nose, but they didn’t turn out to be too much trouble after all. They stayed behind us, sticking out their tongues at each other and like that, so R.G. and I had a little privacy anyway.
I walked real close to her and talked to her in this kind of soft, sexy voice that I use when I snow girls. Yes, I admit it. I started in to do a snow job on R.G.—just pour on the old con a mile a minute. But the funny thing is, when I started to snow her, it turned out I was telling the truth! I meant every living word I said!
“Helen,” I said to her, “you’re the most beautiful girl in town.”
“Oh, snow!” she said to me.
“No,” I said. “Cross my heart. Except for your little eyes, you got the best features of any girl in town.”
“Honest, Dobie?” she said. “Are you telling the truth?”
“Honest,” I said and I took her hand. She didn’t try to take it back either, but my brother Dan saw it and he started making such a big hoo-ha that I let go of it.
“I think you’re attractive too,” she said. “You have a very nice smile.”
(What did I tell you?)
“And,” she said, “you have a good built.”
“So do you,” I said, and she really did. Her legs didn’t have hardly any fat on them and she had a nice round bust.
I’ll tell you about girls’ busts. I’ve gone through several phases about them. At first it used to make me pretty jumpy when a girl started getting her bust. I used to be so busy trying not to look at it that I’d keep walking into things. Then later I changed completely. I used to flip when I saw it! I’d look at it so much that some of the girls told their fathers. But now I finally got the whole thing under control. Most of the time I don’t even think about it, but whenever I do remember to take a look, I’m always very pleased to find it there … I talked to my father about this and he feels exactly the same.
“Can you go out at night?” I asked R.G.
“Till ten on Wednesdays and till eleven on Fridays and Saturdays,” she said.
“Will you go out with me on Wednesday night?” I asked.
“Uh, huh,” she said.
“And Friday?”
“Uh, huh.”
“And Saturday?”
“Uh, huh.”
We were getting close to the ice-cream store. “I love you,” I said.
She didn’t say anything and she didn’t look at me.
We were right in front of the store now. “Do you love me?” I asked.
“I think so,” she said, and we couldn’t go into it any further because Dan and Clarissa were pushing us into the Sweet Shoppe. We couldn’t talk on the way home either because my ape-man brother wanted to play leapfrog. But I’ll tell you something. I never thought I’d ever get a charge out of playing leapfrog, but playing leapfrog with R.G. was the living end!
All the same, we didn’t get a chance to talk. That had to wait till we went on our date Wednesday night. I took her to the movies and then we walked home, the long way, through the park. I told her again that I loved her, which was the truth, and I asked her again did she love me.
“Well, I think so,” she said for the second time, and frankly I got a little browned off.
“What kind of an answer is that?” I said, giving her a severe look. “Either you love me or you don’t. Which is it?”
“Well, I think I do,” she said, “but isn’t it too early to tell? I mean shouldn’t we talk for a while and find out what we have in common? After all, isn’t love when you have a lot in common?”
“No, sir!” I said, shaking my head real hard. “Love is when you flip!”
Well, she admitted that I made her flip, but all the same she wanted to talk and find out what we had in common. So we talked. We talked that night, and we talked Friday night at the Hi-Y dance, and we talked Saturday night at the basketball game, and I’m here to tell you that in the whole history of the world, there were never two people who had so much in common.
We agreed about everything—every single thing! We had the same favorite song and the same favorite movie star and the same favorite television show and the same favorite car and the same favorite color, and I tell you it was just the living end how we agreed about every single thing.
Like I’d say to her, “What’s your favorite sport?”
And she’d say, “Leapfrog.”
And I’d say, “Me too!”
Then she’d say, “What’s your favorite disease?”
And I’d say, “Gou
t.”
And she’d say, “Me too!”
Then I’d say, “What’s your favorite food?”
And she’d say, “Licorice.”
And I’d say, “Me too!”
And on and on and on. So I said to her after we’d been agreeing about everything for three solid nights, “Well,” I said, “now do you know if you love me?”
“I love you,” she said, and I saw that deer again, standing by that lake early in the morning.
I could hardly talk then, my throat was so full of something warm and lumpy, but I made a little speech anyhow. I said, “I love you and I always will. I think you’re the living end and I’ll never go with any other girl.”
Then she said, “I think you’re the living end too, and I’ll never go with any other boy.”
Then we kissed.
Three days later—three short days—that rotten girl was going with another boy. And I’ll tell you something even more repulsive. She would of been going with him the very next day, only it was Monday and her folks don’t let her go out till Wednesday.
Here’s what happened. There’s this house across the street that’s been empty for a couple of months. Finally it got rented to some people named Armitage. They moved in on Monday morning—Mr. and Mrs. Armitage and their son Milton, age of fifteen.
Milton Armitage is the kind of guy that you only have to look at him once—that’s all. Just one look and you can tell right away that here is the kind of guy who claps erasers after school. I mean even my brother Dan—you know what a knot-head he is—he took one look at this Milton and he said, “Brother, there goes a creep.” I mean it’s that obvious.