Yo-Yo Man

"Yo-Yo Man!" The cry rang out across the school yard. No, he wasn't a rapper, but "yo mama" probably remembers him. Yo Yo Ma's's less musically talented cousin? No, but he was a fantastic stringed instrument artist. The Wizard of Wind (rhymes with rind), the Ultra Cool of Unwind, the Spinoza of Spin. The Duke of Duncan, more accurately. The Duncan Yo-Yo Man, a frequent visitor to grammar school campuses in the 40s and 50s. A young guy in his 20s, usually with a suitcase and a fold-up stand—a suitcase filled with the very latest in yo-yo technology (I deliberately avoided the adjective, "state-of-the-art"—up until "family values" American's most overused catch phrase): Solid reds, and blues and yellows, and many with fuzzy diagonal single stripes across the center, golds and silvers, blacks and whites, and then there were the expensive, highly lacquered, rhinestone studded beauties that you wouldn't dare buy unless you were worthy of one—unless you knew what to do with it. Awe-struck kids would gawk as the Yo-Yo Man pulled out a heavily lacquered black job with concentric rhinestones and began his demonstration: "Walking the Dog," "Rocking the Baby," "Around the World," "Looping the Loop," "Making it Sleep," "Shooting the Moon," "Skinning the Cat," and probably a lot more that are irretrievably mired in the eroding crevasses of my memory bank. He could make the yo-yo emit a low hum—like the noise a two-pound mosquito might make, while the best that the most proficient of us could hope for was a sort of unimpressive whizzing sound.

The Yo-Yo Man's coming was never a surprise, as there were always posters around announcing his scheduled arrival, which of course, was always at recess and inevitably during the first month of school.

After his "ooo"-inspiring performance, kids would line up to spend their lunch money on the multi-colored discs. I never saw any girls buying them or even playing with them for that matter. Some sort of cultural gender bias, I guess, and one that Gloria Steinem et al somehow have overlooked. The yo-yo, one of the last all male bastions, torn down figuratively at least, by latent feminist Marilyn Quayle upon her marriage to one.

Unfortunately, I never mastered the art of yo-yo-ing, a liability which, no doubt, reveals a large chink in my masculinity, a chink that only widened with the realization of a similar deficiency in playing marbles. I compensated for the later handicap by avoiding public marble games and simply buying vast quantities of the inexpensive agates. I fired if the measure of marbularity success was how many you could accumulate, buying them was certainly the easier route (not to mention the only one for me), and I would avoid all this stress and humiliation of losing.

But of course, because of the relative expensiveness of yo-yos, I was unable to pursue this same game(less) plan. My friend, Jerry, was one of the best yo-yoists I knew. He, in fact, would win all the Duncan yo-yo contests. He could do every single trick and with more dexterity than anyone else. But the most amazing thing was that he developed this extraordinary skill within a year, at the same time he was mastering the English language and trying to assimilate himself into a strange culture, and an even stranger sub-culture—Charleston. Jerry was a Greek immigrant. He couldn't speak a word of English when he entered our 3rd grade class and had never even seen a yo-yo before, but here it was two years later and he had just claimed his second championship, winning an impressive medal and a wild looking, white yo-yo with a single lavender stripe across the center, and multiple rings of rhinestones that 20 years later Elvis would have probably worn as a pendant.

In vivid contrast to this, I, despite my yo-yo centered environment, was still many fathoms beneath mediocrity. I had purchased a medium priced yo-yo; this year it was a plain yellow job—no stripe and definitely no rhinestones. I was not worthy of those extravagances. I would practice a lot at home, but to no avail, and eventually I even accepted Jerry's offers of tutoring. He was extremely patient, but there was only negligible improvement. I was eventually able to perform the most rudimentary movement of causing the yo-yo to roll back up the string to my hand after flinging it toward the floor, a feat commonly accomplished by 4 year olds, sometimes even accidentally.

Naturally, I never carried a yo-yo with me—then I might be pressured into playing with it—"oh the humanity!" Jerry, on the other hand, always kept his in his pocket during yo-yo season, which was anytime the weather wasn't cold, and he would whip it out at the slightest encouragement. Often, there would be a group of boys standing around in the schoolyard doing their yo-yo posturing. You could hear the whizzing sounds from 20 yards away. Jerry would be among them and I would be in the no yo-yoing audience, who gaped at them unashamedly. Some girls, some geeks and myself. Geek by association? Perhaps. A cute title for a future short story: "The Geek and the Greek"? Maybe.

Jerry and I remained good friend through high school, despite our yo-yo and marbles gap. He went on to excel at yet another male bastion, The Citadel, and later joined the Air Frice, so that he, no doubt, would be able to exponentially expand upon his "Loop the Loop," and "Shooting the Moon."

Occasionally, over the years, I have found myself in the vicinity of a yo-yo and, astonishingly enough, I have found that I am now able to do a few of those once unattainable tricks—oh, only the simple ones like "Around the World" and "Loop the Loop." Well, I guess, comparatively speaking, it's not that much of an accomplishment, and I think I only included it in the "special skills" section of one job application, but it did make me feel a little proud, and maybe the chick got filled in a little—so what if it's with clay—or maybe silly putty.

To be realistic, I guess there's not much peer pressure among middle-aged men for good yo-yo performances. Perhaps, I should be more concerned with more stereotypical areas.

I feel sure there are no more Duncan yo-yo men holding court in school yards. It's too bad, really. Look how much they helped Jerry. And certainly without them, I would never have gotten such an early start in the development of self-deprecating humor.