How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself (7 page)

But as I say, we never did that. I'm sure we would have, if we'd known it was a way to make somebody eat some dirt. You can do that part of it or not, as you please. It all depends on how you feel about getting a mouth full of dirt.

 

 

Here's a thing we used to do in the summer, after a trip to the seashore. We always used to come back with a handful of seaweed, skate-eggs, fiddler crabs in a bucket of water, all sorts of stuff. By the way, for collecting nature stuff, there are lots of swell books, by people who know much more about it than I do. You can get them at the library, I'm sure. One in particular that I want to recommend to you is called
Handbook for the Curious
, by Paul Griswold Howes. It's put together in such a way that if you have a thing, and you don't know if it's a bug or a kind of crab or a snake or a worm—this book will tell you. There are lots of books which will tell you what kind of a bug a bug is if you know it's a bug. But this book will tell you first
if
it's a bug, and then what kind of a bug it is.

One of the things we were sure to bring home from the beach was a clamshell or two. They're nice to look
at, nice to have. You can use them as little dishes, to mix paint in, make paste in,
³
even eat from, and if you can find a big enough one, your father will find it a handy ash tray.

But you can make something out of it, too. If you have the kind of front stoop I used to have when I was a kid, the steps made out of concrete, that's your workbench for making clamshell bracelets. For whom? Well, for your sister, if you've got a sister, or your girl, if you've got a girl,
or if not, just for the fun of making them. You can wear them yourselves. Indians wear bracelets, why not you?

If your front steps aren't concrete, then look around. Probably the sidewalk is, or the garage floor, or a wall. It doesn't make any difference, so long as it's concrete, and the rougher the better. If you'll hold the clamshell with the rounded part down, your hand on top, and just keep rubbing, first the outside layer will wear away, and you'll see the polished shell underneath, and if you keep on rubbing, sooner or later—mostly later—you can grind a hole right through the shell. When it's big enough to get your hand in, it's a bracelet. This is something to do when you've got a lot of time on your hands.

Now I'm going to tell you about another thing we made, a kind of dart, and it's my guess that when your mother or father sees it, you may catch a little hell; I don't know. I did.

 

 

So I guess right here, there better be another little speech about danger, like the one about knives. It's my belief that things themselves are not dangerous. It's the people who use them. One man driving a car is safe as houses; another is a menace to everybody on the road. I think the man who is safe is safe because he knows how to drive a car properly, and the man who is a menace is a danger because he hasn't ever really learned to drive. Sometimes the dangerous man is dangerous because he just doesn't care, which is even worse. You know kids like that, I'm sure.

But it doesn't seem to me the answer to safe driving is to do away with automobiles, nor does it seem to me any more sensible to do away with bee-bee guns because some kid you know is a dope.

I can't give you any better argument than that to use with your parents about any of the few things in this book that are dangerous; and I must say that as far as I am concerned, with my own kids, I show them how to use the dangerous things, then watch them do it themselves, and if I see they don't do it just exactly the safe way, they don't get to use the dangerous thing until they prove to me that they know how to be careful.

It's got nothing to do with age, by the way; I know kids of seven that I'd trust with a knife, and I know men of fifty that I wouldn't trust with a sharp lollipop stick.

So that's the end of the lecture, and this is how you make a needle dart. Get a thin needle from your mother. I'd suggest that you don't hook it from her sewing box, but ask her for it. Ladies are funny about needles.

Then get a burnt kitchen match. Cut or break the burned part off. Now with the thinnest blade of your knife, make a cut each way in the end of the match. It may take you a few matches before you get it done properly. Then put the needle in the center of the cross, eye-end first, and
push it as far up into the match as you can. Take a little piece of thread, and wrap it around the length of the split place. The best way to do this is to smear that part of the match with glue after you've put the needle in, wrap it, and stick the ends of the thread down with glue, too. If you have airplane cement, it will dry almost as soon as you're through wrapping. Make sure the needle is as straight as you can get it.

Then cut just one slit at the other end of the match, about an inch long. Cut two strips of paper, the width of the slit and twice as long. Slip them both into the match at their center point. Then bend each little piece of paper back,
so that you form little wings, the way it is in the picture. I think you'll be pleased to find that this dart used indoors, will stick to practically anything, curtains, furniture, sometimes even walls, and it does not leave a mark. I wouldn't suggest aiming it at the very best antique table in the livingroom, because even a little mark would convince your mother that the dart was dangerous.

Of course it is, and I'm here to tell you if I ever saw a kid throw one of these at another kid, there'd be a ruction in the house that wouldn't die down for a long time.

 

 

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as a suction cup—you know, the little rubber things that you have on the ends of arrows and darts, the thing that perhaps your father has to hold an extra ash tray in the car. But we did use to make something that was very much like it. We called it a leather sucker. It's a cinch to make. All you need is a piece of fairly heavy leather, but soft: not as thick as a shoe sole, not as thin as a glove. My cobbler (that's what we called shoe repairmen when I was a kid) calls it inner-sole leather. It's about an eighth of an inch thick, smooth on one side, rough on the other. You cut it in a circle, and the size isn't important.

Two inches across is about as small as I ever made them and six inches is about as big. I always used them with the rough side down, but with the one I made today I found out it will work either way. It doesn't have to be a very smooth circle, either. In the center make a small hole—the
mumbly-peg blade of your knife is good for this—and put a good heavy piece of string through it and tie a good hard knot. Then put the leather to soak until it's really sopping wet and soft. Take it by the end of the string and walk around until you find a good flat stone, and drop it on the stone. Make sure the sucker is lying really flat on the stone: you may have to tap it down gently with the sole of your foot or smooth it down with your hand.

Then pull up on the string: one of three things will happen: you'll either lift the stone up, or you won't be able to pull the sucker off the stone, or you'll break the string, depending on how heavy the stone is, how strong you are, and how strong the string is. If you happen to live near a
brook or stream, you'll find that's a good place to use the sucker, because there will be flat, wet stones there (it works best on stones that are at least damp), and because you'll be able to keep the sucker soaking wet there.

I built one this morning, just to be sure I remembered how they are made, and I don't live very near a stream, so I soaked mine in the kitchen sink and tried it on things in the kitchen. With a sucker two and a half inches across, I was able to lift up an iron frying pan that weighs three pounds. I managed not to drop it on my foot either. (Hope you have the same good luck.) To get the sucker off a stone or a frying pan or even the floor, don't just keep pulling up until it comes loose, because you may pull the string right through the sucker. Just lift up one edge of it and the whole thing will come loose.