at hairs stuck to me and got up
my nose. Considering everything, Pop acted quite mild.

I met a kid up at the lake in Connecticut who had skin-diving equipment.
He let me use it one day when Mom and Pop were off sight-seeing. Boy, this
has fishing beat hollow! I found out there's a skin-diving course at the
Y, and I'm going to begin saving up for the fins and mask and stuff. Pop
won't mind forking out for the Y membership, because he'll figure it's
character-building.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering if I can get back up to Connecticut again one
weekend while the weather's still warm, and I see that Rosh Hashanah falls
on a Monday and Tuesday this year, the week after school opens. Great. So
I ask this kid--Kenny Wright--if I can maybe come visit him that weekend so
I can do some more skin diving.

"Rosh Hashanah? What's that?" he says.

So I explain to him. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. About half the
kids in my school are Jewish, so they all stay out for it, and I always do
too. Last year the school board gave up and made it an official school
holiday for everyone, Jewish or not. Same with Yom Kippur, the week after.

Kenny whistles. "You sure are lucky. I don't think we got any holidays
coming till Thanksgiving."

I always thought the kids in the country were lucky having outdoor yards
for sports and recess, but I guess we have it over them on
holidays--'specially in the fall: three Jewish holidays in September,
Columbus Day in October, Election Day and Veterans' Day in November, and
then Thanksgiving. It drives the mothers wild.

I don't figure it'd be worth train fare to Connecticut for just two days,
so I say good-bye to Kenny and see you next year and stuff.

Back home I'm pretty busy right away, on account of starting in a new
school, Charles Evans Hughes High. It's different from the junior high,
where I knew half the kids, and also my whole homeroom there went from one
classroom to another together. At Hughes everyone has to get his own
schedule and find the right classroom in this immense building, which is
about the size of Penn Station. There are about a million kids in
it--actually about two thousand--most of whom I never saw before. Hardly any
of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village kids come here because it
isn't their district. However, walking back across Fifth Avenue one day, I
see one kid I know from Peter Cooper. His name is Ben Alstein. I ask him
how come he is at Hughes.

"My da