Mom and I had just gotten back from grocery shopping and I was restless. I had been looking at the Pagoda house to see if Gary had returned so I could ask him about the wallet, which was in my pocket. I kept touching it and soon I was looking at Tomi’s house to see if she was smoking out by the fence and just waiting for me to ask Gary about the wallet. Maybe she figured Gary would be so pissed off at me that he’d dump me as a friend and I’d be all hers. Maybe not. Maybe he’d only slap me around for talking to her in the first place and she’d never talk to me again. Then I looked at Gary’s house some more, and then hers. I may have been craning my neck back and forth for an hour or more wondering what was going to happen now that I was in the middle. I had to make a choice, but I just kept wringing my hands. That’s when my dad walked by and said, “Hey, Popeye, why don’t you do something useful besides waiting like a loser for that Pagoda kid to show up in his jockey shorts?”
