119: After Matthew and I . . .
Little Follies, “The Fox and the Clam,” Chapter 12
12
AFTER MATTHEW AND I had put in a couple of weeks in the third grade, Mrs. Barber got it into her head that Matthew should skip a grade. I told my mother that if Matthew was going to skip a grade, then I wanted to skip a grade too. She consulted Mr. Beaker, who endorsed the idea at once.
Matthew and I were put through a series of intelligence tests. For three mornings, we sat in a tiny room near the administrative office, alone, at two desks set as far apart from each other as the room would allow, with the door of the room open so that the principal’s secretary could keep an eye on us. At lunch time we would compare our answers and speculate about whether we had done well enough to meet the standards required of a student in the fourth grade.
When the intelligence tests were over, we were put through a psychological test. Both of us knew that this was important. We had heard the principal, Mr. Horne, remark to his secretary, Mrs. Torelli, while we were at work on the tests one morning, that he had no doubt that we were smart enough for fourth grade, but that, frankly, he wondered whether we were mature enough to fit in with the other fourth-graders.
We had to be tested individually, since most of the test was administered orally by Mr. Grundtvig, a fat psychologist in a brown suit who had been brought in especially for the purpose. Matthew went into the room first. He was in there for about an hour and a half. I waited in Mr. Horne’s office. When Matthew was finished, he was whisked away by Mrs. Torelli before I was summoned.
I spent a while looking at pictures on cards and describing them for Mr. Grundtvig. I spent a while describing what I imagined fourth grade would be like. I spent a while describing what I imagined fourth graders would be like. I spent quite a while telling Mr. Grundtvig about my relatives and friends, and he took lots of notes.
“Well, Peter,” said Mr. Grundtvig. “We’ve had quite a lot of fun talking, I think. Now we’re going to play a kind of game. Do you like games?”
I was going to say no, which was the truth, but I was sure that would be the wrong answer, so I said, “Oh, yeah!”
“Well, good. This is a storytelling game.” He picked up a booklet and leafed through it. “I’ll read the beginning of a story, and you finish it for me, all right?”
“All right,” I said.
“Here we go,” said Mr. Grundtvig. “One day a man, in the middle of his life, no longer young, decided that it would be nice to row a boat across a bay. He hadn’t rowed a boat in some time. When he got to the very middle of the bay, he was very tired. His hands were sore. His arms were aching. Sweat ran into his eyes. He looked around. The water was murky and gray. The man was as far from where he had started out as he was from where he wanted to go. He didn’t know what to do.”
Mr. Grundtvig closed the booklet and looked at me. “Well, Peter,” he said, “what do you think will happen next?”
I felt very much as the man in the boat must have felt. I was midway between the third grade and the fourth grade. What I said now might be the one thing that sent me either back to the third grade or ahead to the fourth grade. I didn’t care too much which happened, as long as I wound up where Matthew did. If he made it into the fourth grade, then I wanted to be there too. If he had to stay in the third grade, then I wanted to stay there.
Mr. Grundtvig cleared his throat. He had been looking at his notepad, holding his pencil ready. He looked up at me and tapped the pencil point on the pad. “Well, Peter?” he said.
I made the decision in an instant. The way to be sure of winding up where Matthew wound up was to answer as Matthew would. I pulled a long face. “It would be nice if this story had a happy ending,” I said. Mr. Grundtvig began writing at once. “But it will not. I mean, in a way, we’re all like the man in the rowboat—tired, confused, miserable—”
[to be continued on Thursday, October 28, 2021]
You can listen to this episode on the Personal History podcast.
In Topical Guide 119, Mark Dorset considers Intelligence, Assessing; Personality Characteristics and Emotional Stability, Assessing; and Rowboat, Drifting in, as Metaphor for Existential Crisis from this episode.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” and “The Static of the Spheres,” the first four novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.