Free The Pigman by Paul Zindel Page A

floorwalker half turned his back John made believe he was throwing popcorn into the monkey cage, and I thought that man was going to go insane.
    “Bobo. Little Bobo….”
    I made the mistake of leaving the two of them alone while I went to the ladies’ room, because when I came out John was yelling, “Hurry up!”
    “What for?”
    “Mr. Pignati’s going to buy us roller skates.”
    “Oh, no, he isn’t. He’s spent enough money on us.”
    “He’s not spending any money,” John corrected. “He’s going to charge them!” He ran ahead and caught up with the Pigman, who was heading for the sports department.
    “How do those fit?” the salesman asked.
    “Mr. Pignati, I don’t think you should buy these.”
    “I used to love roller-skating,” he answered. He looked so happy and funny bending over in his seat, trying to put on one of the skates, that I had to laugh. One part of me was saying “Don’t let this nice old man waste his money,” and the other half was saying “Enjoy it, enjoy doing something absolutely absurd”—something that let me be a child in a way I never could be with my mother, something just silly and absurd and… beautiful.
    “Please let me get them,” Mr. Pignati said, practically asking for my permission.
    “I’ll wear mine,” John told the salesman, a tiny round bald man with spectacles which quickly dropped to the end of his nose as he laced up the skates.
    “Pardon me?”
    John picked up his shoes and plopped them into the box the shoe skates came in. “I said I’m going to wear them.”
    “But you’re on the fifth floor.”
    “She’ll wear hers too.”
    “John, are you crazy?” Just as the words came out of my mouth I could tell from the fallen expression on his face that if I didn’t wear the roller skates, I’d be letting him down. I’d be disappointing him in the main thing that he liked about me. I—and maybe now even the Pigman—were the only ones he knew who could understand that doing something like roller-skating out of Beekman’s was not absolutely crazy. Everything in his home had to have a purpose. There was no one there who could understand doing something just for fun—something crazy—and that was what he’d liked about me from that first day when I laughed on the bus and was just as crazy as he was.
    “I’ll wear mine too,” I sighed, and before long we were rolling toward the escalator—a good number of people staring.
    “Wait for me,” Mr. Pignati yelled, carrying his skates under his arm and laughing along with us.
    All John was doing was opening his arms and in his own way saying: “Look at me, world! Look at my life and energy and how glad I am to be alive!” We must have looked just like three monkeys. The Pigman, John, and me—three funny little monkeys.
    Dear Alice
     
    by ALICE VANDENBERG
     
    HE LOVES DOLLS
     
    DEAR ALICE: My husband and I have just had another violent fight concerning our five-year-old son Timothy, and I desperately need your advice.
    My son adores playing with a doll I bought for him last Xmas. He spends hours with it, putting doll clothes on it and feeding it on doll dishes. This aggravates his father no end, and several other adults have made nasty remarks about it too.
    Personally, I see nothing wrong with Timothy playing with this doll because it is a sailor doll. He puts a cute little white hat and uniform on it and I think the image is totally masculine. Why is it when a little girl plays Cowboys and Indians everyone says she’s a darling little tomboy, but when a boy plays with a doll they say he’s queer? Please answer this.
    WORRIED MOTHER

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    I cut that “Dear Alice” thing out because it reminded me of Norton, and there are a few other things I’ve got to tell you about him because he gets involved in this memorial epic a little later on.
    Lorraine told you she thinks Norton and I hate each other. It’s true. Norton is so low on the scale of evolution he belongs back in the age of