Page 105 - WhyAsInY

a MissteP, a MisnoMer, anD soMe eleMentary MisaDventures
• When Myron Karasik gets hit by a car shortly after your hernia operation, you should not feel bad that he has taken the spotlight from you.
• Do not describe what Robert Goldfarb showed to Diane (a.k.a. “Dinky”) Coleman behind the easels in Mrs. Cotler’s class.
• When it comes to your turn at show-and-tell each year, do not repeatedly display the test (provided to you by your father) that is used to determine whether a particular liquid is blood—as it is pain- ful to produce a positive result.
• Be careful about stereotyping people. Joey DiGregorio was a very nice kid, notwithstanding the fact that he wore a black leather jacket that was studded with silver, acted tough, lived in an extremely big house right across the street from 193, had a father who drove a new Cadillac Eldorado every year, and, it transpires, was a caporegime in the Bonanno family.
• When you look up from your desk in the sixth grade and the chalked words on the blackboard form one amorphous white cloud, tell the teacher, and you’ll be moved to a seat in the front row; tell your par- ents, and you’ll get your first of many dozens of pairs of eyeglasses.
• When you duck underneath your desk and cover your head with your arms, as you learned to do in frequent air raid drills, you should not look out through the classroom windows because, if the Rus- sians have targeted Flatbush with an atomic bomb, the flash that will occur on impact might well blind you.
• You should at all times wear around your neck the silver-covered aluminum disks imprinted with your name, address, and date of birth that were provided to you by the government of the United States, acting by and through P.S. 193. Then, if you are incinerated
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