“THE TROUBLE WITH THEODORE,” Mitzi said, “is that he doesn’t have big muscles. You never see anyone picking on Popeye the way they pick on Theodore, do you?”
We were on our way home from school, with Theodore walking a few feet behind us. He kept turning around every few minutes to see if we were being followed. There was a much older boy who had been picking on Theodore and scaring him half to death. Mitzi and I looked for him in the schoolyard. If we found him we were going to tell him to stop being such a big bully, but he was nowhere in sight.
“My mother and father don’t want Theodore to fight,” I said.
“He doesn’t have to,” Mitzi explained. “If he looks tough, if he has big muscles, nobody will ever start up with him in the first place. That bully only picks on him because he’s such a puny little kid.”
I turned around and looked at Theodore and I had to admit that Mitzi was right. He looked very little walking all by himself, and he was pretty skinny and pale besides.
“The thing is,” Mitzi said, “we have to help him build up his muscles. I’ll come over later and show you something.”
We parted at the next corner and I waited for Theodore to catch up. “What did that boy say to you again?” I asked him.
“H-he said he was going to g-give me an Indian burn, and he said he was going to get me into trouble, i-if I didn’t give h-him my baseball cards and my m-marbles.”
“That big bully! I bet he wouldn’t pick on someone his own size! Don’t worry, Theodore. I won’t let him hurt you.”
But Theodore looked worried anyway. He was still watching for that bully over his shoulder when we entered the lobby of our apartment house.
When Mitzi came over later, she had a big stack of her favorite comic books with her. She handed a pile of them to each of us. “Here. Look through these. We want to find the ads for body-building.”
“What?” Theodore said.
“Theodore, don’t worry,” Mitzi said. “Leave it to us. Just look for an ad with a picture of a man with great big bulging muscles.”
Theodore started turning the pages and in a few minutes he forgot all about the ad because he was so busy looking at the comics.
But Mitzi and I looked very carefully. We read the ads for little machines that pull blackheads right out of your skin, and the ones for marvelous magic tricks that could “fool your friends and amaze your relatives!” There was one ad for a special brassiere that was supposed to help girls with small busts look glamorous. The ads were really much more interesting than the comics.
Finally Mitzi said, “Here it is! This is the one we want. Listen to this, Shirley. ‘We can build you a better body in just thirty days or your money back! King Sandor was once like you, afraid to stand up for his rights, afraid of threatening bullies who tried to take his girl and his job away. King Sandor was once a skinny helpless weakling! When you look at his picture, this will be hard for you to believe, but through his special, scientifically devised, secret muscle-building plan, King Sandor became the he-man he is today. Send for our free instruction booklet that will come to you in a plain brown envelope, without cost or obligation. Don’t delay and we will include a beautiful free portrait of King Sandor, suitable for framing.’”
Mitzi turned the book around so that I could look at King Sandor’s pictures, Before and After. In the Before picture, King Sandor looked even skinnier than Theodore. He was wearing loose-fitting swim trunks and he was standing on the beach with very poor posture and a sad expression on his face.
But in the After picture, which almost filled the rest of the page, King Sandor had muscles as big as watermelons. He was wearing tight leopard-skin trunks and leather wristbands and a great big smile. He didn’t look anything like the King Sandor in the Before picture. “Wow!” I said. It was hard to believe. I read the ad myself. It said, “Without cost or obligation” in plain English. “Okay,” I told Mitzi. “Let’s do it!”
We decided to send for the instruction booklet under the name of S. Braverman at my address. I was the only S. Braverman in the family and King Sandor had no way of knowing that I was a girl. Even while we were filling out the coupon, Theodore just sat there looking at Superman and Blondie and Nancy and Sluggo, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Mitzi licked the envelope and sealed it shut. “Make a muscle, Theodore,” she said.
He turned the page of the comic book and held his arm out without looking up. It looked as straight and skinny as a pencil.
Mitzi squeezed it. “Mush!” she said. “But we’ll take care of that!”
We shook hands on it over Theodore’s head.