Max Shulman
[1] Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute — I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, precise as a chemist’s scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And — think of it! — I only eighteen.
[2] It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Bellows, my roommate at the university. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable. Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze that comes along, to surrender oneself to idiocy just because everybody else is doing it — this, to me, is the acme of mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey.
[3] One afternoon I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his face that I immediately diagnosed appendicitis. “Don’t move,” I said, “Don’t take a laxative. I’ll get a doctor.”
[4] “Raccoon,” he mumbled thickly.
[5] “Raccoon?” I said, pausing in my flight.
[6] “Petey, why? Look at it rationally. Raccoon coats are unsanitary. They shed. They smell bad. They weigh too much. They’re unsightly. They —”
[7] “You don’t understand,” he interrupted impatiently. “It’s the thing to do. Don’t you want to be in the swim?”
[8] “No,” I said truthfully.
[9] “Well, I do,” he declared. “I’d give anything for a raccoon coat. Anything!”
[10] My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear. “Anything?” I asked, looking at him narrowly.
[11] “Anything,” he affirmed in ringing tones.
[12] I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It so happened that I knew where to get my hands on a raccoon coat. My father had had one in his undergraduate days; it lay now in a trunk in the attic back home. It also happened that Petey had something I wanted. He didn’t have it exactly, but at least he had first rights on it. I refer to his girl, Polly Espy.