Anybody Can Do Anything Read Free

put him in a tub of hot water and when the doctor came he tested his reflexes and said Cleve wasn’t hurt at all, but it was a long time before he would take an active part in any of Mary’s and Marjorie’s schemes, particularly when he learned that he had dropped his twenty-five cents when he fell and some little ghoul had stolen it.
    As I look back on it, I couldn’t have been too bright, because only one year later when I was seven, Mary and Marjorie got me to jump from the loft of a neighbor’s stable on to a very small armful of straw, which they had carelessly thrown on top of an upturned rake.
    We were playing vaudeville this time, because Mary and Marjorie had recently been taken to their first vaudeville, whose wonders, substantiated by Joe Doner, had included a human bird and a man who balanced steel balls on his cars. I couldn’t balance steel balls on my ears but I could be Betty, the Human Bird, the Greatest Jumper of All Times, which was why on that bright summer morning I was standing shivering in the little doorway of the unused loft. It was only about a ten- or twelve-foot jump but I’ll never forget how high up I felt.
    Big Butte, an extinct volcano which had always seemed to us to be the highest mountain in the world, was right infront of me. The big M-1915, painted in white on its black rock side by the daring School of Mines boys, was now at eye level. I could see the School of Mines where Daddy taught. I could see Mary the Cook hanging out washing in our back yard. I could see hundreds of great big blue mountains. I could see Mary marching around the yard with a stick pointing at me and shouting, “Ladees and Gentlemen! Look up at her, Betty, the Human Bird, the bravest child in the whole world. Just a little girl of seven who will jump from that terribly high building down onto this little pile of straw!”
    I looked down at the pile of straw and it certainly was little. “That’s not enough straw,” I said, backing away from the edge of the doorway. “Sure it is,” Mary said. “Anyway that’s all Mr. Murphy would let us have. Hurry up, Betsy, it’ll be fun,” she called running a few wisps of straw through her fingers to prove it.
    My stomach felt ice cold and my heart seemed to have moved up into my head. “Thump, thump, thump,” it was hammering just behind my eyes. Mary had promised me on her word of honor that if I jumped off high enough things often enough, I would be able to fly like the man in the vaudeville show. She had started me jumping off fences, the woodshed roof and our high front porch and as I jumped more and more I was less scared but I hadn’t noticed that I landed any more gently.
    Mary had said that some day when I jumped from a high enough place it would suddenly be just like a dream and I would float to earth. This was to be the big test, and if this dream came true and I floated, then there was a good chance that my dreams of having jet black curls down to my ankles and an entire Irish lace dress over a bright pink satin petticoat like the night watchman’s little girl, might come true. Anyway it had been Mary’s best selling point.
    “Come on, Betsy, dear,” she was calling. “I’ll count foryou and when I get to ten you jump.” I looked down at the upturned admiring faces of the neighborhood children as Mary began counting in loud ominous tones. “One-ah, two-ah, three-ah.” I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and jumped when she got to ten-ah. I did not fly. I landed hard on the pile of straw and two tines of the hidden rake went through my foot. Mary and Marjorie, truly appalled by their carelessness, carried me all the way home. At least Mary carried me and Marjorie held up the handle of the rake.
    When we got home Mother called the doctor and while we waited for him I soaked my foot in a basin of hot Epsom salts and water and Gammy comforted me by saying, “Cheel-drun are nothing but savages. It won’t surprise me at all if they have to cut