The Yo-Yo

I really, really wanted a Duncan Imperial yo-yo. And my mother was not one to give you what you wanted without a “pleasurable struggle.”  My task was set.  I had to perform some piano piece—long forgotten—perfectly. When I finally did it, I was rewarded with an orange/gold Duncan Imperial.  Not the “butterfly” model, but the Imperial..  Secretly, I was not thrilled with the color. But I had my yo-yo.

I spent the night before taking it to the Ivanhoe Elementary School playground practicing my “around the world” moves. The next day, at lunch, I whipped it out and yo-yoed with the other Duncan crowd. The bell ending lunch recess rang and I lined up.

Mrs. B. was on recess duty that day and she also happened to be my teacher.  She was the sort of woman who really wanted to look good to her fellow teachers and principal.  Every morning she entered the classroom; a hastily built “bungalow” meant to accommodate the baby boom’s press upon the school’s original building, in spike heels.  Within seconds, she was wearing flat canvas shoes.  The spike heels would re-appear as she went to faculty room, assemblies, lunch and recess duty. This was a daily ritual.

It might have been the heels she wore for recess duty that made her grumpy.  But grumpy and illogical she was on the day that I first unleashed my “around the world” moves on the playground.  With neither rhyme nor reason—nor cause—she took the Imperial away from me.  Not just my yo-yo, but my friend Alice’s as well.

The injustice seemed painfully intolerable.  I had done nothing wrong.  I wasn’t playing with it after the bell rang. I had behaved in line.

My mother was fond of telling us that the “teacher is always right” and I held little hope of getting my newly won Imperial back until the last day of school.  But that night the yo-yo gods were watching over me.  For some unexplained reason, my mother thought it was unfair too—and much to my grateful surprise, actually sided with me.  She wrote a terse note to Mrs. B asking for my yo-yo back.  It was only one of two times when my mother did something so out of character.

The next day I rather cockily entered the cloakroom and handed Mrs. B my mother’s note.  Alice did the same with her own note.  Except Alice had forged hers.  I got my yo-yo back.  I don’t think Alice did.