I RODE MY BIKE to the Lodkochnikovs’ to tell Ariane that I wouldn’t be able to watch movies with her in the afternoons anymore, but no one was home there, so I rode on down to the waterfront to see how my investment was doing. I wasn’t in a particularly good mood when I walked through the door to Captain White’s. I hopped onto a stool and Porky poured me a lemonade.
“I’m all ready with the sales figures,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“It was a lot of work,” he said.
“A little hard work never hurt anybody,” I said, or snarled.
“Say, what’s the matter with you?” said Porky.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’m sorry about that crack. I know it’s a lot of work. It’s going to pay off, though. You’ll see.”
“I’m afraid I already see,” said Porky. There was something grim in his voice. “I seem to see a disturbing trend.”
“Oh, great,” I said.
“I think that—um—as a stockholder—you’d—uh—better prepare yourself for a shock.”
“A shock.”
“Yeah.”
“How come?”
“Because when you take a look at these figures, I think you’re going to see what I see, and what I see is hamburgers.”
“What?” I said.
“We sell more hamburgers than anything else,” said Porky.
“Hamburgers?” I said.
“Hamburgers,” he said.
“I didn’t even know we were selling hamburgers.”
“We just started last week.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Hey, you haven’t been coming in very regularly lately.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been—”
I was about to say that I’d been spending a lot of time in the Lodkochnikovs’ television room, watching movies, but that didn’t sound like a good excuse for a major stockholder in Captain White’s Clam Bar, so I said, “—working on my science report.”
“Say, that’s right!” said Porky. “How’s it going?”
“It’s canceled.”
“Canceled?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to talk about it. “Tell me about these hamburgers.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know what to say. It’s got me so shook up I can’t see straight. I’ve confronted problems before, Peter, and I’ve always been able to step aside from them and see right to the solution. It’s uncanny, the knack I have. You throw a problem at a person and with a lot of people it’s like one of those hard, hot grounders right at them, you know what I mean? They’re paralyzed by it, because it’s coming right at them. Well, I mean, isn’t that why it is a problem, because it’s coming right at them? But they panic. They freeze. Likely as not the ball hits them in the chin, a run scores, they’re humiliated about three different ways. That doesn’t happen to me. Something in me says, ‘Porky, get out of the way.’ So I respond to this little inner voice, and guess what? That turns out to be the secret of handling a hard, hot one—get out of the way. You take a step to one side or the other, and suddenly it’s routine. It’s taking that step to the side that gives you perspective on the situation. I know it. I know it, and I’ve done it before, but I just can’t seem to do it this time.”
“Start at the beginning,” I said. “Maybe I can help.”
[to be continued]
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🎧 631: I rode . . .