I Was a Teenage Dwarf

by Max Shulman

  But creep or not, he took my girl away from me. You know what he had? Now, in the second half of the twentieth century, in the Atomic Age, do you know what Milton Armitage had? A bicycle built for two, for Pete’s sake!

  Big deal! A bicycle built for two! But when Milton wheeled it out of his driveway and started pedaling around and waving and giggling and simpering like somebody from the lower orders, I can tell you that R.G. flipped! I was watching her from my porch, and I saw her get red and short of breath and like that, and, boy, I knew there was going to be trouble. I knew it in my bones.

  Sure enough, when I came to get her for our date Wednesday night, all I got was the deep six. “You must be mistaken,” she said to me, looking at her fingernails. “I have no recollection of making a date for tonight.”

  “Let me refreshen your memory,” I said. “Do you have a recollection of saying you’d never go with any boy but me?”

  “Mmm, let me think,” she said and put her finger under her chin and cocked her head in that particular way that always makes me flip. Right at that minute what I wanted to do most in the world was take her in my arms and give her forty thousand kisses. But I also wanted to give her a shot right in her little eyes.

  “You know darn well you said it,” I told her. “How can you talk like that to me and three days later go out with that creep Milton Armitage?”

  “Milton happens to be a very nice boy,” she said, giving me a severe look.

  “I’ll tell you what you happen to be,” I said. I was good and sore now. “You happen to be a rotten girl, and that’s what I’m going to call you from now on—R.G., for Rotten Girl.”

  I’ll tell you something. I’m not trying to excuse her or like that. She acted plenty rotten and she deserved to be called a rotten girl and she still does. But she’s not really rotten. I knew it even on the night she left me for Milton Armitage. Down deep I knew she was good, and if I could only spend some time with her—get her alone, talk to her, show her how much we had in common and how we made each other flip—I knew if I could do that, I’d get her back.

  But the trick was to spend some time with her. Wednesday night she went pedaling off with Armitage. Friday night again. Saturday night too. Each night when they got home I hid in the bush by R.G.’s porch and listened to them giggle and whisper and like that. It’s a good thing he didn’t try to kiss her because I would of leapt out of the bushes and wrapped that bicycle around his pointy head. But he never did try to kiss her. All he ever did was hold her by the elbow with his fingertips. Is that the living end? Can you imagine what kind of a guy goes around holding girls by their elbows with his fingertips?

  But all the same, I didn’t kid myself. Armitage was making good progress with R.G., and if I didn’t move fast, I was going to be a dead duck. But how was I going to get her alone? She wouldn’t give me a date. In fact, she wouldn’t hardly talk to me. She was sore because I was spying on her and Armitage. That bush by her porch isn’t very big.

  Well, I’m here to tell you that except maybe in famine areas and like that, you couldn’t of found a more miserable person than me. It was just day after day of pure black misery, and I really shudder to think what might of happened if I hadn’t of got this brilliant idea on Tuesday night.

  I was sitting on my porch with my family. R.G. was sitting on her porch with her family. Across the street O.L. Armitage was sitting on the porch with his family. That’s what I was calling Milton by then—O.L., for Old Loathsome. R.G. and O.L. were grinning and waving their fingers at each other. I was just hunched in a chair wishing I was dead.

  I’ll tell you who else was miserable—Mrs. Spencer. She looked like somebody’d been hitting her with a mallet for six weeks. Or like she’d been beaned by a couple dozen clam shells. I mean she looked crummy!

  “What’s the matter, Alice?” said my mother to her. “Are the gulls getting you down?” My mother always gets real concerned when somebody looks bad. My father’s a doctor, so he doesn’t care.

  “Oh, dear, it’s not that,” said Mrs. Spencer, more crying than talking, “I’ve looked everywhere and I cahn’t find a boy who will go to dahncing school with Clarissa. Oh, what am I to do? A girl must have dahncing school!”

  “Poor thing,” said my mother to Mrs. Spencer.

  “Oh, what am I to do?” said Mrs. Spencer again.

  My mother looked at my brother Dan.

  “No!” yelled Dan.

  Mrs. Spencer looked at Dan.

  “No!” he yelled. “No, sir! I’ll kill myself if you try to send me to dancing school!”

  That’s when I got this brilliant idea.

  “Dan,” I said, “come here. I want to talk to you.” I took him inside where nobody could hear us. “Dan,” I said, “how would you like to work out with my barbells?”

  “What?” he said, standing there with his mouth open.

  “I mean it,” I said. “You can work out every day.”

  “Dad won’t let me,” he said.

  “We won’t tell him,” I said.

  “What do I have to do?” he said.

  “Go to dancing school with Clarissa,” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  “That’s the deal,” I said. “Take it or leave it.”

  Dan thought for a minute and then he got a kind of a shrewd look. I was surprised because I’d never seen him before with a shrewd look. “That’s not the whole deal,” he said. “There’s a little blackmail too, isn’t there?”

  To tell you the truth, I was so pleased to see Dan smartening up that I didn’t even deny it. “Sure,” I said. “If R.G. doesn’t give up Armitage and come back to me, then you don’t take Clarissa to dancing school. It’s a package deal, see?”

  “I see,” said Dan. “You get R.G. and I get the barbells.”

  “Deal?” I said.

  “Deal,” Dan said.

  We shook hands and went back outside.

  “Mrs. Spencer,” I said to Mrs. Spencer, “do you think that if I could talk Dan into going to dancing school, you could talk R.G. into going out with me on Wednesday night?”

  “I will not!” said R.G.

  “But of course you will, dear,” said Mrs. Spencer, giving her the severest look I ever saw her give anybody. In fact, it was the severest look I ever saw anybody give anybody.

  “How about Friday night too?” I said.

  “Mother—” said R.G.

  “Shut up,” said Mrs. Spencer. “She’ll be glad to go out with you Friday night, Dobie.”

  “And Saturday?” I said. I figured three days would do it for sure.

  “But of course,” said Mrs. Spencer.

  “Ah,” I said and gave a big smile. “Dan,” I said, “will you go to dancing school with Clarissa?”

  “Sure,” said Dan.

  Our mother and father were giving us some pretty sharp looks, but Mrs. Spencer was practically off her rocker with joy. “Oh, this is mahvelous, mahvelous!” she kept saying. “I’m going in right now and make lemonade and cookies for everybody!”

  Dan pulled me aside. “Hey,” he said.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Let’s go up to your room and work out on the barbells now,” he said.

  “Now?” I said. “But it’s so late. Let’s start tomorrow.”

  “Now,” he said.

  “But Mrs. Spencer’s making lemonade,” I said.

  “Now,” he said, “or the whole deal’s off.”

  So I took him up to my room and pulled the shades and took my 75-pound knurled grip bar-bells out of the closet. “The secret about lifting bar-bells is this,” I said. “You got to use your whole body, not just your arms. Here, I will demonstrate the military press.”

  I demonstrated the military press.

  “Gee!” said Dan. “Let me try it.”

  “All right,” I said, “but be very careful.”

  “I will,” said Dan and lifted the bar-bells and dropped them right on his foot and let out such a yell that the who
le town must of heard it.

  My father came running into the room with my mother and everybody right behind him. My father took off Dan’s shoe and sock and examined his foot real carefully.

  “Serious?” asked my mother, who was standing there looking real pasty and nervous.

  My father kind of shrugged. “Fractured toe,” he said. “Maybe two.”

  “Oh, my baby!” cried my mother, grabbing Dan to her bust. “Oh, my poor baby!”

  “Can he dance?” I asked.

  “What?” said my father, giving me a severe look. But I mean really a severe look. “Dance? Of course he can’t dance!”

  “How soon do you think he can?” I asked my father in a friendly way. I didn’t want to get him any madder.

  “Weeks. Maybe months,” said my father.

  “Oh, dear!” cried Mrs. Spencer, biting her handker-chief.

  Dan looked up at me. “I’m sorry, Dobie,” he said, and he really was.

  I patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, kid,” I said. “I’m sorry about your foot.” And I really was too.

  Then I walked slowly out of the room and out of the house and down the street, not knowing where I was going and not caring either because nothing else mattered if I couldn’t get R.G. back, which I knew now that I couldn’t. Well, I’m here to tell you I was wrong. I got R.G. back. I took her out Wednesday night and Friday and Saturday night and, just like I thought, she found out again how much we had in common and how we made each other flip, and she gave up Old Loathsome Armitage and came back to me where she belongs.

  But I’m here to tell you that for a while it was touch and go. One little detail came close to lousing up the whole deal. I almost couldn’t get a pair of white gloves to fit me. See, I have these very big hands. I don’t mean they’re freakish or like that; they’re just very big. You know—manly. But I finally found some white gloves that fit.

  What do I need with white gloves? Are you kidding? Who do you think is taking Clarissa to dancing school?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LONG LIVE THE FRANCE!

  by Dobie Gillis, aged 16

  If you squeam, don’t read this next part, because it is not for the squeamish.

  Just remember that I am now a man of sixteen years old, not a child, and there is bound to be a certain amount of spicy detail in how I spend my time, so just remember, you have been fairly warned.

  All right, I will start at the beginning, which is the Fourth of July drag race, which Beans Ellsworth and me almost won. There were kids eighteen and nineteen years old in that race, but, just the same, Beans and me almost won it. We would have won it for sure if our engine hadn’t of exploded in the sixth lap. Oh, well, c’est la vie, as they say in France, which is where I spent my summer vacation, which I will tell you all the loathsome details about in a minute.

  First I want to tell you about Beans Ellsworth. Beans is the girl who moved next door after the gulls chased away R.G. Spencer, and a sweller girl you won’t find if you spend the next million years looking. I mean she is the dernier cri, as they say in France, a country I hate. She is smart and loyal and true and friendly and can bore a cylinder to a tolerance of one thousandth of an inch. She is very good-looking, too, except maybe for her height, which is just a little bit under six feet. (By the time I write this, it might be just a little bit over. She grows pretty fast.)

  But, like I say, Beans is a darn pretty girl, except maybe for her height, which actually isn’t too noticeable because she slouches a lot. (Her mother once tried to correct Beans’s posture, but when she saw what happened, she gave it up in a hurry; in fact, she promised to raise Beans’s allowance if she’d keep on slouching.) But, like I say, except for her height, Beans is a darn pretty girl. Her hair is yellow and her eyes are blue and her bite is perfect. She’s got a good figure too when she stands up straight, but, like I say, her loved ones beg her not to.

  Well, you can see why they call her Beans—it’s short for Beanstalk—and of course they call me Jack. My real name happens to be Dobie, as you know. Beans’s real name happens to be Agnes—or is it Alice? I forget.

  Anyhow, Beans and me are almost exactly the same age—only two days apart—but she has always been the leader of us. I don’t mind admitting it. It’s no disgrace to follow a leader when the leader happens to be a genius, which is what Beans happens to be. Why, would you believe she was only fourteen years old when she built her first hot rod? It exploded, of course, but you name me one other fourteen-year-old girl who ever built a hot rod.

  Explosions, incidentally, are Beans’s weak spot as a rod builder. She’s had five rods blow up under her so far—under me too, because I always ride with her in the drags. Beans thinks she might be getting the compression a little too high. She’s working on it now, and I’ll bet my last nickel that she’ll figure it out, because—I’ll say it again—the girl happens to be a genius.

  Well, to get back to that Fourth of July when Beans and me almost won the drag. I got home about five o’clock and said, “Hello, Ma; hello, Pa,” and tried to sneak up to my room quietly, but they noticed my bandages right away.

  “Oh, Dobie!” my mother hollered. “You have been riding with that awful girl again!”

  By “that awful girl” my mother meant Beans. It is the one great sorrow of my life that I can’t get my mother to be friends with Beans. Beans is perfectly willing. She’s gone up to my mother a million times and stuck out her hand and said “Shake!” but my mother only starts gibbering and hides in her sewing room.

  On the other hand, Pa (my father) has only the highest regard for Beans. They Indian-wrestle quite a bit and shoot baskets and chop stumps and all like that. I keep hoping my mother will join in these friendly, healthful activities, but she just stays crouched under her slant-needle machine.

  I’m not knocking my mother, mind you. I love her very much. And my father too, but with him it’s easy. I mean he’s not on my back all the time. He goes his way; I go mine. Once in a while he asks me what I’m up to, and I tell him, and he shakes his head and walks to the nearest bar.

  But Ma, she rides me like a jockey. “Dobie, you’re not developing!” she keeps screaming. “You are narrow, dull, stagnant!”

  “Well, Ma,” I say to her, “maybe I am narrow, dull, and stagnant, but my color and appetite are good, and I am happy, and that’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”

  And she says, “No, the most important thing is to enrich your mind and exalt your soul, which will never happen as long as you keep running around with that awful girl next door.”

  And I say, “I will overlook that statement because you are my mother who gave me birth and tended me when I was helpless, but I want you to know that I love Beans and Beans loves me and you will never separate us. Never, never, never!”

  And Ma wrings her hands and turns to Pa and yells, “Do something, Herbert! How can you sit by and let your son throw away all his fine potentials? Do you want him to grow up to be a grease monkey?”

  And Pa puts down the medical journal and says, “Well, Winifred, grease monkeys get a good union wage with fringe benefits and a pension plan, and let’s face it, Winnie, our son does present rather a grave employment problem.”

  And Ma hollers, “Oh, Herbert, you are awful, just awful! Very well, you may give up on Dobie, but I shall not. I shall continue to stimulate his senses and rouse his mind, for I know that basically he is fine and sensitive.”

  Then she drags me to a bunch of museums and galleries and concerts and like that, and she keeps saying, “Isn’t it stimulating? Isn’t it rousing!” And I try to be polite, because after all she is my mother and you’ve got to make allowances, but pretty soon I start yawning so much that she gets embarrassed and takes me home. Then I go next door and help Beans shackle down her rear end, and Ma goes into the sewing room and sulks. I don’t know what she’d do without that sewing room.

  But to get back to that Fourth of July when Beans and me almost won the drag, I came into the hous
e and they saw the bandages and Ma started carrying on like a madwoman. “This settles it, Herbert,” she shrieked at Pa. “We must get him away from that awful girl. If you are not concerned about his character, you might at least fear for his life.” My father, being a doctor, fears much less for our lives than my mother, who worries about health a lot. She would be all the time calling a doctor except that there’s no use—she’d only be getting Pa.

  “Now, Winnie,” said Pa, taking a professional peek under the bandages. “It’s nothing serious. Calm down.”

  All of a sudden, Ma leaped straight up in the air and clapped her hands about a thousand times. “I have it!” she screamed. “We will all spend the summer in France!”

  “And where, pray,” asked Pa, “will we get the money?”

  “The trip will be deductible,” said Ma. “Part of it, anyway. You can go to the medical convention in Paris while you are there.”

  I should explain that my father is always trying to keep up with the newest jive in medicine. I mean he reads papers and journals and takes it all real serious. For months, Pa had been saying how he wished he could run over to France to have a look at the meetings where all the medical scam would be discussed, which was what Ma was talking about right now.

  “But, Winnie,” said Pa, “it will only take me a day or two to sit in on the meetings. What will we do with the rest of the summer?”

  “We will broaden Dobie’s vistas and lengthen his horizons,” said Ma. “Dan will be at camp anyway, so this trip is really to improve Dobie.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but I am not going anywhere this summer. Beans has found a three-and-a-half-liter L-head Bugatti in the city dump, which all it needs is a new engine and three wheels, and we are going to be busy every minute. However, if you and Pa want to go to France, it’s all right with me and bon voyage.”