Free My Own Two Feet by Beverly Cleary

Norma climbed into bed, as exhausted as I, and balanced the green cushions on her feet. We both slept soundly.
    In the morning we awoke to the song of a mockingbird. Because we were so happy, we lay in bed singing at the top of our voices a popular song: “You push the middle valve down. The music goes ’round and around, wo-ho-ho-ho, and comes out here!” We had actually made it back to Chaffey and one more year of college.

Life with a P.E. Major
    The next afternoon, when Norma and I had recovered from the day before, someone knocked on our kitchen door. A strange man introduced himself, said he lived in a room at the rear of the house, and held out a basket of tomatoes. We were delighted, accepted them, thanked him, and closed the door. Late the next afternoon he knocked again and offered us the evening paper, which he could not have had time to read. Again we accepted his gift, thanked him, and shut the door. This went on for several days before he gave up and kept his paper. We were so naïve we did not realize that he expected to be invited in. After all, he was old. Probably thirty.
    For two such different people, Norma and I gotalong surprisingly well, although she said I made her feel tall and lanky, and I said she made me feel short and dumpy. We enjoyed housekeeping without our mothers telling us what to do even though we did exactly what they would have wanted us to.
    The first one home from school shopped for groceries with money from the $7.50 apiece that we had deposited in a cookie jar for a month’s supply of food. Sometimes, if our schedules permitted, we went to the A&P together because marketing was fun. The young men who worked there were lively and often stuck a thumb into an avocado. “Oops! Damaged goods. Can’t sell that,” they would say, and present it to us. Once when they marched up and down the aisles with brooms over their shoulders whistling “The Stars and Stripes Forever” for our amusement, the manager appeared. Suddenly the men were diligently sweeping while Norma and I examined the vegetables.
    One joint attempt at washing sheets and towels in the laundry tub in the shed behind the house was enough for us. We sent our linens to a laundry and subtracted the money from the cookie jar. Every morning we walked to school with our dishes washed, our lunches packed, andour bed converted to a couch. Our mothers would have been proud.
    The icebox somehow turned into my responsibility because Norma had a carefree attitude toward it. During the day she simply put it out of her mind. I could not. That icebox haunted me. Suddenly, in the middle of class, I would remember that we had forgotten to empty the pan under it that, at that very moment, might be overflowing and leaking through the floor onto Mrs. Tuckness’s bed downstairs. Between classes I would rush to telephone her. She was always grateful for my warning.
    That first semester our social life was limited. Paul came to see me a couple of times before he went off to his junior year at U.S.C. and a part-time job on the Los Angeles Times . We walked up Euclid Avenue to see the new Chaffey library and the new women’s gym built with government funds. We talked about our futures and Paul revealed, without actually saying so, that even with a scholarship and a part-time job he had to manage on very little money. Once when Verna drove into Los Angeles to attend the book breakfast, I went along and met Paul to sit for a few minutes on a bench in Pershing Square before he had to go back to the Times . He looked tired. I wondered about his living conditions in Los Angeles but didnot ask and did not expect to see him again. His work, our studies, and our lack of money, I knew, made meetings impossible. I was sorry, but our goals were more important than our friendship.
    Sometimes Atlee and his friend Harold would drop in to listen to Norma’s radio. Norma and I were always careful to walk around and to