Free If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails by Barbara Corcoran, Bruce Littlefield Page B

returned to the city, I called Steve Solomon. The game of PR was about to begin.
    "You charge seven hundred and fifty dollars a monthl Every month? ' I asked in disbelief, whisking my blond bangs away from my eyes. 'Mr. Solomon, that's an awful lot of money: it's more than I'm spending on all our advertising!" My palms were sweating. I stood up to straighten the seams on my new red dress, and paced once around my chair before sitting back down.
    Steve Solomon, a dark-suited, serious man with a thoughtful face, explained. 'The best way to make your company known is to put out some sort of survev or report on the marketplace. Something with a lot of numbers—the media love numbers. Maybe compare this year's prices to last year's."
    "1 guess that makes sense,'" I said without a clue as to how or where I was going to get $750. "Could we call it something important like the New York City Apartment Price Report?''
    "Maybe." he considered diplomatically, jotting a few words in his notebook. "Or how about calling it The Corcoran Croup Report, or, even better. The Corcoran Report.
    "The Corcoran Report?" I paused and listened to the sound of that. "But it doesn't mean anything." I said. "No one knows who or what Corcoran is."
    "No," he answered, "but do the report and they will.''

    Summer. UndercliffAvenue.
    My hands were covered with chalk as I finished my masterpiece, "The Largest Sidewalk Snail Game in the History of the World!"' The Snail wriggled up and down the sidewalk, over the curb, and onto Undercliff Avenue. It stretched from Mrs. Rinebold's house, past Mrs. Gibbons', and right up our front steps.
    Square after square of symbols and shapes showed the neighborhood kids exactly what to do as they hopped onto each space: first with two feet, then one right foot, and the next commanding a left foot in reverse. Next came one of my tricky spirals I called "spinners," followed by a dozen other variations on and on to the end.
    The kids began lining up for their turn to hop, clap, jump, and spin their way around to the finish line.
    As usual, Mean Michael Mertz was standing at the head of the line. He darted through the first ten squares, pretending to almost trip on the reverse double spin, then bolted through the last forty spaces, making my Snail look easy.
    Fatty Patty stepped up next, and I just knew he was going to hurt himself. There was no way his chubby legs could possibly do my double spinner.
    "Wait a minute, Patty!" I said, grabbing my pink chalk and walking over to the square. "I gotta fix one thing." I erased the spinner with the sole of my sneaker, drew two new feet in the same square, and stood up. "Okay, go ahead, Patty."
    'Wo way!" Michael Mertz protested loudly. "You can't do that! You can't just go and change it like that!"
    "Oh yes she can," Ellen said, defending me.
    "No way, no how!" he repeated. "You can't do that!"
    All the kids began shouting. It was Timmy Tom who broke the impasse when he peeped, "Why don't we ask Mrs. Corcoran, because she's the mother. 1 ''
    I ran up the steps and through the side alley into the kitchen. Mom was at the ironing board.

    "Mom!" I blurted, trying to catch my breath. Michael Mertz saj s I can't change a square in my Snail game. Can I?"
    "It's your game. Barbara Ann," she said, rendering her decision \\ ithout lifting her eyes off Dad's white shirt, "So make up your own rules."
    I bounded down the stairs, shouting Mom's verdict: "My mother says it's my game and I can make up my own rules!"
    I stepped off the curb and stared Michael in the face. "And my rules are: It's Patty's turn!"
    Fatty Patty finished the game on two solid feet, and I promised myself that tomorrow I'd make my Snail even bigger! I'd start all the way up at the library, come down past the church, and wind my Snail right back up Oxen Hill clear out of Edgewater!
    July 1981. The Corcoran Group.
    I slid a piece of our new Corcoran Group stationery into my Selec-tric, still thinking about the blank sidewalks