Finding the Worm by Mark Goldblatt Read Free Book Online Page B

Citizenship
    Here’s the second essay on good citizenship I wrote for Principal Salvatore:
    Last week, I learned that good citizenship is more than just writing “no” over and over, which shows a negative attitude. So: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. In conclusion, good citizenship is saying “yes” all the time.
    I slid the paper under the door of Principal Salvatore’s office as soon as I got to school, and Miss Medina handed it back to me an hour later. Principal Salvatore had written on the back:
    NO. Try again.

January 6, 1970
The Big One-Three
    Dad woke me up this morning just after sunrise. He does that every year on my birthday. He sat down hard on the side of my bed, which bounced me about a foot off the mattress, and I went from fast asleep to wide awake in that second I was in the air.
    The first thing I saw, after my eyes focused, was him grinning down at me. Then he said, “I tell you, Jules, you don’t look a day over twelve!”
    That’s his routine, every birthday, as far back as I can remember. That same dumb joke, year after year, except the number keeps getting bigger. I don’t mind, to be honest. It’s the only day he does it, and it seems to mean a lot to him.
    I yawned and said, “What did I get?”
    “You’re thirteen, and you’re still expecting a present?”
    “Yeah.”
    “All right, kid, I’ll bring you home a pack of Camels.”
    “Good enough,” I said.
    He snatched the pillow out from under my head, which sent me rolling over. Then he clobbered me across the shoulders and back with it, just kidding around. After that, he got up and left for work.
    Now here’s what you need to know about my dad: he’s maybe the most regular guy on the planet. Nothing ever changes with him. It’s not a bad thing, but it also makes him real predictable. Like, for example, he always buys presents for me and Amelia about a week before our actual birthdays and always hides them in the same place … on the floor in the back of the closet in his and my mom’s bedroom. He stashes them underneath a pile of dress shirts he doesn’t wear anymore because he sweated through the collars. So every year, a few days before my birthday, I sneak into the closet and check underneath the pile of shirts to find out what he got me.
    What he got me this year is a Bobby Murcer–autograph baseball glove.
    I’ll act real surprised when he hands it across the table tonight after dinner. That’s part of the routine too. Plus, it
is
a great present. He knows how bad I need a newglove, and he knows Bobby Murcer is
my guy
. I’ve followed him since he was a rookie in 1965. Even after he got drafted into the army, I waited two years until he got out, and then I followed him again. I even kept a scrapbook the first couple of years—I pasted in the newspaper box score of every game he hit a home run. So, yeah, my dad couldn’t have done much better with his present. And any other year, getting a Bobby Murcer baseball glove would have been the highlight of my day.
    But Quentin totally stole my dad’s thunder.
    It was around three-thirty when the telephone rang. Amelia raced into the kitchen to answer it, which is what she