How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself by Robert Paul Smith

and I really don’t know any more how old I was when I did the different things in this book, so if you find that some of the things are too old for you—wait until you’re old enough to do them. If you find that some of the things in the book are too young for you, first figure out if they’re really too young, if nobody else knows that you’re doing them. I know that when I was a grown man, my wife and I went to live in Mexico
for a while, and walking down the street one day, I saw a whole bunch of kids playing with what was, for me, a brand new toy. It was a yo-yo, and I’d never seen one before. I bought one—I told the shopkeeper that it was for my kid, but I didn’t have a kid then, and I brought it home with me. Now certainly a yo-yo, as a matter of fact any toy, was too young for a man almost thirty years old, so I used to sneak out in the back yard when I wanted to learn how to use a yo-yo, and any time anybody came to the house when I was doing it, I stuck it in my pocket and pretended that I had been out back doing something important and grownup.
    So, first of all, remember that the name of this book is How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself and if some of the things sound a little childish, figure it out: do you think they’re too childish, or do you think that if someone else saw you doing it, he would think it was childish? And if you really are too old to do some of these things, why don’t you show your kid brother how to do them, or your little sister, or any little kid on the block? He or she or they will think they’re great things, and they’ll think you’re great for showing them.

    Take, for example, polly-noses. You know how, in the fall, those little wing things fall off the maple trees. They look like this.
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    First of all, if you’ll get up on a fairly high place and just drop one, you’ll see some real flying. Then, after you get down from the high place, if you’ll separate the two wings at the joint, you’ll see that the base of each half is sort of double. If you’ll stick your fingernail in between the two halves and pull them apart a little, you’ll find that there’s some sticky stuff that lines this place, and if you put it on your nose, it’ll stay there and
you’ll have what we called a polly-nose. Polly was what we called a parrot, and somehow we thought that with these on, our noses looked something like parrots’ beaks.
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    Silly? You bet. But sometimes it’s fun to be silly, and didn’t you laugh just the other night when the man on television put on a funny hat?
    That reminds me of another kind of silly thing we did. We called it owl-eyes. You need another kid, or a docile parent, for this. Put your nose up against his, and your forehead up against his. Both of you close your eyes, one of you or both of you count, “One, two, three, owl-eyes.” As you say “three,” both of you open your eyes at the same
moment, and I’ll guarantee you’ll see owl-eyes. I just got to wondering what would happen if you did this all alone, by pressing your nose up against a mirror instead of another kid. I went and tried it, just this minute. It works, so this is something you can do all by yourself.
    In the summer, in my part of the country, late in the summer and right on into the fall, there’s a plant growing all over the place wherever there’s a brook or a stream or a lake. It’s called jewel weed, and it’s easy to find by looking for the orange flower. It’s a real pretty plant, and in the late summer and early fall, in addition to the flowers there’s a little green pod that grows on it. It looks like a tiny green banana.
    Well, if you find the plant, and if you find the pod, and if you squeeze it very gently, you’ll find out that it may look like a tiny green banana, but it behaves more like a tiny green