My sister, Deane, was five, and I, little Bobby, was barely three in 1936.  She was a hard act to follow cause she was reading real books all by herself.  When she started to school it seems everybody knew she could already read.  Sure enough the folks in the school decided that she didn't need to go to the first grade.  They started her in the second grade.  What a deal I thought, skipping first grade.  

            For the next three years, I must have heard about my sister skipping first grade three gazillion times.  I knew there were a bunch of things you only needed to learn once, the first time.  The next thousand times you heard it, you didn't learn anything. 

            Bobby, eat your carrots, they would say, and you can skip first grade just like your big sister.  Carrots give you good vision day and night, they said.  You have to have good vision to read like your sister.

            Bobby, eat your spinach they said.  Popeye always ate his spinach, and he was real strong right after he popped a can of spinach with one hand and slugged the whole thing down in a single gulp.  When he needed extra strength, he would gulp it down raw, right out of the can.  Then he would twirl Brutus round and round like a lasso, and whip him with one hand tied behind his back. 

Spinach never worked that way for me. 

            I really hate spinach, I thought to myself.  If you have to eat spinach, swallowing it in a single gulp is the only way to go so you don't taste it very long.  Even Popeye must have hated spinach cause that's the way he ate it.  Glugg! Glugg! and it was gone. 

            Then it came again. 

            Bobby, you eat your spinach and you can skip first grade just like your big sister.  I had heard it so many times, I was becoming numb, deaf and dumb, and wondered about all those important things you might learn in the first grade.  If I had to eat spinach for the next three years to skip first grade, I would just not go to first grade. 

My sister missed out on all those things she would have learned in the first grade, if she had gone to the first grade.  She may be developmentally disabled, I thought to myself, from missing out on all that good stuff in the first grade.  Suddenly I didn't worry about skipping first grade any more. 

We didn't have a lot of things, a few books, fewer toys, but good grandparents.  We really needed grandparents.  They lived in a big old house at 745 South Cedar in Ottawa, Kansas.  Grandpa was the preacher at the First Baptist Church several blocks away.  Grandma worked as a schoolteacher in Indiana way back in 1892, 47 years earlier, but she hadn't worked since.  She was the preacher's wife, raised six kids, then she chased the grandkids as needed.  I don't remember her chasing me, but the stories suggest she probably did.  She was pretty good at chasing chickens, and there were always a lot of chickens around to chase, but that's another story. 

Ma was teaching school way out west in Plains, Kansas, clear across the state from Ottawa.  She had to support us, because our father disappeared shortly after I was born.  I understand he took one look at me, then said  "He will never skip first grade".  Then he disappeared, and was never seen around our place again.  I knew I could do a bunch of things that my sister never thought of, but my old man didn't know that when he flew the coop. 

So my sister and I lived with our grandparents for a year while Ma taught school in western Kansas.  I was pretty sure that western Kansas was just like in the movies.  It was full of Indians, badgers, and rattlesnakes.  I know grandpa had a farm out there, but after ten years they all left and moved back to Ottawa.  I just hoped Ma would survive the wild west until the year was over. 

Grandma and grandpa were a lot more relaxed than Ma.  They pretty much allowed us to do what we wanted to do within reason, of course.  The summer before Ma started teaching, the big old house was prepared for our yearlong stay.  They hung a swing from one of the trees in the yard.  Here we are by the swing.

That's me standing by the tree.  Cousin Pat is in the swing.  Big brother A.T. is standing on the right, and sister Deane is pushing cousin Pat in the swing.  They said I was pouting by the tree cause I wanted to be in the swing.  I think I am pouting because I wanted to push the swing, and my sister wouldn't let me.  She wouldn't let me do anything. 

Inside the house they put up all the breakables, assigned us to our designated bedrooms, collected my two toys and Deane's many books in a spare room, hung a trapeze from the rafters in the attic, warned us about the open electric sockets all over the house, and told us both to mind our Ps and Qs, and our grandparents.  It was several years before I understood exactly what Ps and Qs were, and why we should be careful with them. 

One of the first things I recall about grandpa, preacher and all, was his favorite statement about Ps, not Qs.  When we were all seated at the dinner table, grandpa would wait for exactly the right occasion. Then without smiling or otherwise indicating that he was behaving in an un-preacher-like manner, he would say,

 Now Bobby, you eat every bean and P on your plate.  I knew exactly what the Reverend I.W. Bailey meant, so I followed his lead very carefully, and replied just as seriously,

Yes sir, Grandpa.  I was pretty sure he was referring to a different kind of P, but I never did it.  I knew what Grandpa meant when he referred to Ps, but I didn't know about Qs for a long time.  I knew that Grandpa was far more interested in Ps than Qs, and he wasn't concerned about me skipping first grade at all. 

After Grandpa left for the church each day, my sister would follow Ma's role model.  That model is best described as follows:

Deannie, Ma would say, Go find out what Bobby is doing, and tell him not to.  With these standard instructions, my sister spent half her time telling me to stop doing things.  It was a real pain most of the time, but I knew that the other half of the time she would spend reading.  So my standard reply was:

Why don't you go find a book to read, and leave me alone.  Being a loving and devoted and conscientious sister, she often took my suggestion and disappeared. 

After she disappeared, I did pretty much what I wanted to do.  One of the first things I did was to check out the open electric sockets.  They appeared to be quite harmless.  One socket in particular was especially attractive.  It was located on the first landing going up the winding stairs to the second floor.

Just to prove to myself that the warnings were exaggerated, I watched that socket carefully for several days, - and nothing happened.  Then one day when nobody was around, I climbed up to the landing and examined the socket up close and personal. 

How totally harmless I said to myself as I stuck my finger into the shallow opening.

ZZAAAPPPP it went, and showered my right hand and arm with a cloud of sparks.  Then it shoved a thousand pins and needles into my fingers, hand and arm all the way to my elbow.  My entire right arm was tingling with a sensation I had never experienced before.

After a minute the tingling and the pins and needles started fading away, and I thought to myself:

Just where is your big sister when you really need her?

Then I added, still thinking to myself:

I may not skip first grade, - but I sure discovered one-trial learning when I was only three years old.  Whatever was in those sockets was able to jump out as far as your elbow, so I kept a safe distance from all open sockets from then on.  I never told anybody about this one trial thing I had learned all by myself.  They were already watching me like a hawk.

Then one day it really happened!  Grandpa had gone to church leaving me alone with the women-folks.  It seemed like a good time to check out the trapeze in the attic.  Since the attic was a little spooky, I asked Sis if she would go up with me.  We both went up the narrow stairs into the attic on the third floor. 

The trapeze was hung from the rafters in the highest part of the roof right next to the chimney.  In order to get onto the trapeze bar, which was quite a ways off the floor, they had built a wooden box that could be moved to wherever it was needed.  Sis crawled up onto the box and took her turn on the trapeze first.  She was pretty good and could swing from her hands and arms, and knees.  Then she got tired of swinging, and decided to let me have a turn. 

I crawled up onto the box and took a swing or two.  I had a lot of trouble swinging far enough to get back onto the box behind me.  I was just too little to do it easily.  I guess there was some advantage to being a little bigger. 

Standing on the box, I discovered that if I started swinging from the back edge of the box, I could almost always get back to the box on the first swing.  If I missed it the first swing or two, I just had to wait for the swing to slow down, then drop to the floor like a cat.  Then I would crawl back up onto the box and try it again. 

Being curious and all, I also examined the trapeze bar, and the double hooks used to fasten each end of the bar.  It was pretty neat with one hook coming down from each direction.  I guessed that way the bar would not come off by accident.  I played with the double hooks, detached the bar from the rope at one end, and examined the metal hooks real carefully. 

They were shiny and new, and clean enough to put in your mouth, I thought to myself.  So I put one of the double metal hooks in my mouth, just like every three-year old would do. 

At this point I decided it was time to fly.  I lost my balance standing on the edge of the box, and fell toward the floor, with the trapeze hook still in my mouth.  With the jerk from the fall, the hook end came up through my left cheek an inch from my mouth, and I found myself swinging back and forth on the rope like a dead chicken. 

I don't remember much pain, but there must have been some.  What a pickle I was in, I thought.  I couldn't get back up on the box.  It was too far away.  I couldn't reach the floor, cause it was too far down.  When you are hanging from your cheek, it is pretty hard to holler for help.  I had no idea where Sis had gone.  Grandma was two floors down, and was hard of hearing.  Even if I could holler, she wouldn't hear me. 

So there I was, suspended, - hung by the chimney with care, with hopes that St. Nicholas, or anybody, soon would be there. 

The mind keeps going, I discovered, even after the swinging stops.  I knew that my great grandpa died from falling off a horse.  I had fallen into a horse tank on the farm earlier in the year, but I managed to crawl out OK.  I stuck my finger into the wall socket just a few days earlier, and didn't die.  I didn't drown, wasn't electrocuted.  Maybe I am indestructible, Super Kid, I thought.  I wondered if you can die from hanging by your left cheek? 

The longer I hung there, the more I worried.  I could already see the article in the Ottawa Herald the following day:

Little Bobby Barnard, three-year-old grandson of the Rev. I. W. Bailey, was discovered hanging from a trapeze hook in the attic of the Bailey residence on South Cedar Street yesterday afternoon.  He was apparently playing with the trapeze when he decided to swing with the hook in his mouth.  He didn't swing very long. 

His grandmother, Flora, discovered his little body swinging very gently back and forth.  After some deliberation she lifted him back onto the box, and removed the hook from his mouth, very much like unhooking a large-mouth bass. 

By the time the doctor arrived at the Bailey home, the hole in his cheek was swollen shut, there was little sign of bleeding, and he did not require any stitches. 

Sources indicate little Bobby was perfecting one-trial-learning, a foolproof technique for surviving dangerous events that would kill an average person.  So far this year, he has survived drowning in a horse tank, electrocution using regular house current, and now hanging in the attic.  He is planning to survive Indians and rattlesnakes in Western Kansas in the near future.

Shortly after the doctor left, Bobby was busy looking for more things he could use to demonstrate his own one-trial learning, - never to do them again.  Clearly he can do a lot of things his big sister never thought of.