I Was a Teenage Dwarf

by Max Shulman

  I was, therefore, more than a little startled when at the end of six weeks of sitting next to Zelda, she turned to me one day and said, without preliminary, “I love you.”

  I made the only possible reply, “Huh?”

  “That’s right. I love you,” she repeated.

  “Zelda, I am, of course, flattered,” said I, “but—”

  “Don’t get a swelled head,” she interrupted. “You’re nothing so special. You’re dumb as an unborn marmot, you’re pigeon-toed, and you’ll be bald before you’re thirty.”

  “Madam, I do not wish to be unkind,” I said frostily, “but you are no traffic stopper yourself.”

  “Yup,” she agreed, “we’re a couple of dogs, all right. But still and all, we’re not too repulsive. And anyway, what’s the difference? We’re victims of propinquity.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said I.

  “Propinquity,” she said. “Nearness, closeness. Sigafoos and Wembley of Harvard, in a study of 2,900 married couples, proved that in an overwhelming majority of cases the couples first fell in love because of propinquity. You put a boy and girl next to each other for long enough, and it’s bound to happen; it’s a scientific fact.”

  “But I don’t love you,” said I with more truth than gallantry.

  “You will,” she said confidently. “You’re Gillis and I’m Gilroy. We’ll be sitting next to each other for the next four years. You might as well give up now. You can’t beat science.”

  “I can try,” I said, and that night when I took Angela to our trysting place behind the School of Animal Husbandry and smelled her luminous hair and kissed her alabaster throat and laid gentle hands on her limber, fan-shaped back, I knew that resisting Zelda would be one of the easier tasks of my life.

  The next morning before class Zelda handed me a box of chocolate-covered cherries. “What’s this?” I said.

  “A gift,” said she.

  “But why?”

  “To soften you up,” she replied. “It’s not that I don’t have confidence in propinquity; it’s only that I’d like to speed it up a little.”

  “Zelda,” I said, returning the candy, “thanks a lot, but it’s no use. Won’t you please believe me?”

  “A stubborn case,” said Zelda, shaking her head gravely. “But if there’s one thing I’ve got, it’s perseverance.”

  This was on Tuesday. On Wednesday she brought me a pair of beaded moccasins. On Thursday she brought me a silver-headed walking stick. On Friday my world collapsed.

  Friday was the day of midterm exams. My marks, it pains me to report, were the lowest in the history of the engineering school. The whole campus was talking about it—including Angela.

  “This,” said she to me, “is the end.”

  “Oh, no!” I shrieked.

  “Oh, yes,” said Angela firmly. “You won’t even get through the first semester. You’ll flunk out and go back to poetry, and you’ll never make a living, and you’ll move in with my father, who is sixty-two years old and has a kidney condition. Dobie, goodbye.”

  “No, Angela, no!” I cried, restraining her. “I’ll get through the semester, I promise you.”

  “How?” she asked.

  She sure had me there. “I’ll get sensational marks from now on,” I said.

  “How?” she asked.

  She sure had me there too. “I’ll do it,” I assured her, taking both her hands in mine. “Trust me, Angela, trust me.”

  “Well,” she said, after a long, nerve-racking pause, “okay. But remember, now, if you don’t get through the semester, it’s absolutely and positively the end.”

  “Yes, my darling,” I agreed, kissing her knuckles. “Yes, my golden love object.”

  I went forthwith to my room and opened my books and proceeded to study with superhuman concentration. I studied until my eyeballs were red as cranberries and my cerebellum dropped with fatigue, and at the end of twelve unbroken hours I climbed into bed, spent and full of despair, with my science-proof brain just as dumb as when I had started. Oh, how was I going to get through the semester, thought I, tossing in agony. How was I going to keep Angela? How?

  The next morning before class Zelda was waiting for me in the corridor. “Here’s a present,” said she, offering me a gold-plated, six-bladed Boy Scout knife.

  “No, thank you,” I said dully.

  “The trouble with you,” said Zelda, “is you’ve got a closed mind. If you’d just open up a little, propinquity would do the rest.”

  “Oh, go away,” said I, being in no mood for any of her propinquity nonsense.

  She grasped me by the shoulders. “What can I do to please you?” she demanded. “Cook your meals? Scratch your back? Do your laundry? Do your homework? What?”

  “Yes!” I shouted, feeling life and hope and courage return to me. For the answer to all my troubles had suddenly been put into my hands! “Yes, Zelda,” I said happily, “you can do my homework.”

  Because if she did, I’d get good grades, pass my courses, and Angela would be mine forever!

  “All right,” said Zelda, “I’ll do it. Well find some cozy spot and get together every night and do our homework and maybe a little smooching on the side.”

  “Oh, no!” I said hastily. That was not at all what I had in mind. My nights were reserved for Angela, and only Angela.

  “No what?” asked Zelda.

  “I can’t see you at night,” said I.

  “Why not?”

  I thought fast. “Because I’ve got a job.”

  “Where do you work?” she asked. “I’ll come sit with you. The more propinquity the better, I always say.”

  “You can’t do that,” said I.

  “Why not?”

  I thought fast some more. “I’m a lifeguard at the Y.M.C.A. pool,” I said glibly.

  “Oh,” said Zelda.

  And so the poor woman was persuaded to do my homework every night all by herself, while I carried on with Angela behind the School of Animal Husbandry. Every morning Zelda would bring me my homework, all neatly and correctly done, and she would ask, “Well, Dobie, is propinquity working yet?” and I, heaven forgive, would answer, “Well, Zelda, it’s too early to be sure, but I think I’m beginning to detect a few signs.” I had to give the wretched girl some encouragement, otherwise she might get tired of doing my homework, and then where would I be?

  What about my conscience, you ask? I’ll be frank. At first it raged and squalled. But finally, in Angela’s arms, it slept. After all, I told myself, Othello had murdered for love, and Menelaus had started a whole war. Next to theirs, my sin was pretty small potatoes.

  Besides it was only temporary. Once I had Angela hooked so firmly that she couldn’t escape me, I intended to get out of engineering and back to the Arts College where I belonged. Then I wouldn’t have to flimflam poor crazy Zelda any more, and I would tell her the whole hideous truth. Actually, thought I, consoling myself further, I would be doing the unfortunate woman a favor if I convinced her that her propinquity theory was nonsense.

  With this kind of thinking I held my conscience at bay, and life became good again. Best were the nights—the sweet sessions of love-making with Angela—but even the days were marked with pleasure. With Zelda doing all my homework, there was no longer any need for me to try to follow the lectures during class. I just sat back and relaxed and thought tender thoughts of Angela. I even dashed off a few poems. One of them, I honestly believe, ranks with the most moving things I have ever done. It is called starkly, “I Love You,” and it goes like this:

  I love you with all my power,

  I love you with all my might,

  I love you at any hour,

  I love you by day or night.

  I hope we will soon be married,

  But if I should die before,

  See to it that I’m buried

  Somewhere near your door.

  Strew roses on me humbly,

  And heave a frequent sigh.

  Though I grow gray
and crumbly,

  I’ll always be your guy.

  How I wished I could have shown this poem to Angela! But of course I could not. I just folded it up and stuck it away in a book, for Angela had to believe I had given up poetry and was concentrating on science. Otherwise she would leave me posthaste, and that, of course, I could not risk.

  So, with untaxing days and idyllic nights, the weeks passed agreeably. Then it came time for final exams. “Dobie,” said Zelda to me one morning, “do you think you can get some time off from your job at the Y.M.C.A. pool? Final exams start soon, and I’d better help you get ready.”

  So I went and told Angela I would not be available for several nights because I was studying for exams. Naturally, I didn’t tell her who I was studying with. It didn’t suit my purposes at all for Angela to know about Zelda—or vice versa.

  Then began several nights of intensive tutoring. Zelda and I found a quiet corner in the library, and there, with boundless patience, Zelda gave me a cram course. For me it was like learning Choctaw. I didn’t understand one single word that was said. “Don’t try to understand it,” Zelda said. “Just remember it, because these are the things that will come up in the exams.”

  And that’s the way I did it—learned it by rote, committed it to memory, syllable by meaningless syllable, as Zelda repeated it over and over and over.

  And, just as Zelda predicted, the things she had drummed painfully into my head were the very things that came up in the exams. And I was ready. This time, thanks to Zelda, I had the answers. With speed and confidence I whipped through the exams and walked, whistling gaily, from the room.

  Imagine my surprise, then, when the grades were posted and I learned that I had flunked every single exam. And not only flunked them, but flunked them each with a big round zero!

  “You look green,” said Zelda as I stood, quaking, in front of the bulletin board.

  Wild-eyed, I turned to her. “Zelda, I don’t get it. I answered those questions exactly the way you told me.”

  “Yup,” she said.

  “What do you mean, ‘yup’?”

  “I mean all the answers I told you were wrong.”

  “But why?” I cried, totally bewildered.

  “Because,” said Zelda, “you are a no-good rat.”

  “I don’t quite follow you,” I said nervously.

  “I’ll start at the beginning,” said she. “One night a couple of weeks ago while I was answering the problems in your lab manual, a sheet of paper fell out. There was a poem written on the sheet of paper. It was called ‘I Love You.’ Do you remember it?”

  I licked my dry lips. “Yes,” I said.

  “Well,” continued Zelda, “I thought you’d written the poem to me. I thought propinquity had finally started working on you. I was very happy. I wanted you to know how happy I was. So I phoned the Y.M.C.A. and asked for you. They never heard of you.”

  I nodded my head sadly. “So you went looking for me.”

  “And found you behind the School of Animal Husbandry with Angela. So I made some inquiries about Angela, and I learned you were using me to stay in science so you could keep her. So I decided to fix your wagon.”

  “Well,” said I with a wan smile, “you did it.”

  “You sore, Dobie?”

  “No,” I sighed. “I guess I had it coming.”

  “Oh, cheer up,” said Zelda, slapping my back. “You don’t belong in science anyhow. Go back to the Arts College and start over. You’ll be happy there.”

  “Happy without Angela?” said I, with a bitter laugh. She was lost to me now, irretrievably and forever. When I went back to the Arts College, I would have to start all over from the beginning, which meant that Angela would be a half year ahead of me and we wouldn’t be in the same class any more. Not that it mattered; Angela had made it abundantly clear that we were finished if I flunked the first semester of science, which I thumpingly had.

  “Forget her,” said Zelda. “You’ve still got me.”

  “That,” said I, “fails to put the roses back in my cheeks. No offense.”

  “It’s all right,” said Zelda. “I’ll get you yet. I’m Gilroy and you’re Gillis, and I’m transferring to the Arts College with you.”

  “You still on that propinquity kick?”

  “Absolutely,” she declared. “It’s a scientific fact. It can’t fail!”

  You know something? Zelda was right.

  Propinquity works like a charm. Today I am happily going steady with Harriet Gilmore, a lovely, sensitive girl, who was placed by alphabetical seating between Gillis and Gilroy.

  Zelda, after fussing for a bit, has gone back to science, where she belongs, and today she is going steady with a very decent fellow named Clyde Gillingwater. We doubledate often.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE LADY OR THE WILDCAT?

  by Dobie Gillis, aged 19

  Propinquity and the alphabet betrayed me. In my sophomore year a guy named Walter Gilman sat between Harriet Gilmore and me, and that was the end of that.

  Disillusioned with girls, disenchanted with poetry, I transferred to the School of Zoology. Here, for a time, I found happiness. Animals, unlike girls, are loyal and constant and true. On the other hand, you can take girls more places.

  So after a while, I got to thinking it really wasn’t necessary to make a choice between girls and animals. I could have both. I stayed in the zoology school, but I also got a job as a waiter in a sorority house. Surrounded thus by the two species I love best, one would assume that I was practically reeling with joy. One would be wrong. I was miserable.

  How come? I’ll tell you how come. It was because of a girl named Miranda McCreedy and a girl named Celeste Schwartz and a wildcat named Sam.

  First, Miranda—

  One afternoon when I was in the library reading up on the white-lipped peccary, my eye was caught by the young woman sitting across the table from me. She was indeed a young woman to catch the eye. Dark she was, with lips of vivid crimson. Her teeth gleamed, her eyes flashed, her young bosom rose and fell passionately. A girl of dash and fire, it was clear.

  “Excuse me, miss,” I said with a warm smile, “but it is clear that you are a girl of dash and fire.”

  “I am angry,” she replied.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked, closing the book about the white-lipped peccary and taking her hands in mine.

  “Yes,” she said. “Will you join me in a great crusade?”

  “Miss,” I said, looking at her flashing eyes, her vivid lips, her gleaming teeth, her heaving young bosom, “I would join you in a cement mixer.”

  “You’re sweet,” she said.

  “You’re full of dash and fire,” I said.

  “My name is Miranda McCreedy,” she said.

  “How do you do?” I said. “I am Dobie Gillis.”

  “How do you do?” she said.

  “I’m majoring in zoology.” I said. “Do you like animals?”

  “I adore animals,” she said.

  “Oh, bully!” I said. “I could not care for a girl who did not care for animals.”

  “I love all animals,” she said. “Dogs, cats, sheep, horses, white-lipped peccaries—”

  “Miranda,” I breathed, pressing her hands to my cheeks, “I am yours.”

  “Ah, good,” she said. “Now about my great crusade—”

  “Yes, tell me about it.”

  “Dobie,” she said, “do you agree that the University is a stronghold of democracy and equality?”

  “I sure do,” I said ringingly.

  “And do you know that in this stronghold of democracy and equality, snobbery is rife, discrimination is rampant?”

  “No!” I said, shocked.

  “I refer to sororities,” she declared.

  “Oh,” I said without joy.

  “I am preparing a petition to abolish sororities at the University, and you must help me.”

  “Oh,” I said with even less joy.

 
; She looked at me sharply. “What’s the matter? You don’t seem very enthusiastic.”

  “Miranda,” I said, “it would be shortsighted of me to help abolish sororities, because I am working my way through college by waiting on table in a sorority house.”

  “You are?” she gasped, recoiling from me. “Which sorority?”

  “Alpha Rho.”

  “But that’s the worst!” she exclaimed. “That’s the snobbiest of the snobs, and the snootiest of the snooters!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “They seem like a nice clean-cut bunch of girls to me.”

  “They’re monsters!” she yelled. “They’re arrogant, they’re overbearing, they’re stuck-up, they’re un-American!”

  “Come now, Miranda,” I protested. “Everyone says they’re the best sorority on campus.”

  “Sure they are,” she shouted. “They’re the biggest snobs. That makes them the best sorority.”

  “Now, Miranda—”

  Her voice went up another fifty decibels. “Snobs—that’s all they are! Bunches of snobs, looking down their noses at the common people!”

  “Miranda,” I said gently, “you are overwrought. You must calm down.”

  “Calm down? How can I be calm?” she shrieked.

  “Well,” I said, “whenever my nerves get jangled, I always go to the zoo. There is nothing so soothing as a visit to the zoo.”

  “I don’t want to go to the zoo,” she hollered.

  “I think we had better leave here,” I pointed out, “for I have just heard the librarian phoning the police.”

  Sped by baleful stares from the staff and patrons, we took our departure from the library and went to the zoo. Here we were made welcome by Mr. Minafee, the nice young zoo keeper, with whom I had become fast friends in the preceding weeks. A fine young man, Mr. Minafee; and his zoo was wonderfully well stocked.

  As I knew it would, peace returned to Miranda while she wandered with me among the cages and corrals. The furrows vanished from her brow, the spring came back to her step, as we admired together the kudu and the kiwi, the ocelot and the marmot, the aye-aye and the cavy, the jaguar and the murre, the krait and the pangolin, the tapir and the coati, the ounce and the okapi, the lemur and the toucan, the white-lipped peccary, even.