But the last time it happened I didn't laugh.
I picked myself up and Joe pushed me down again.
Then I saw the look on Joe's face and it gave me a funny feeling in my stomach.
"He's a scream," one of the girls said. Everybody was laughing.
"Oh, you were right, Frank," choked Ellen. "He's a one man side show."
Then she said, "Here, Charlie, have a fruit." She gave me an apple, but when I bit into it, it was fake.
Then Frank started laughing and he said,
"I told ya he'd eat it.
C'n you imagine anyone dumb enough to eat wax fruit?"
Joe said,
"I ain't laughed so much since we sent him around the corner to see if it was raining that night we ditched him at Halloran's."
Then I saw a picture that I remembered in my mind when I was a kid and the children in the block let me play with them, hide-and-go-seek and I was it.
After I counted up to ten over and over on my fingers I went to look for the others.
I kept looking until it got cold and dark and I had to go home.
But I never found them and I never knew why.
What Frank said reminded me.
That was the same thing that happened at Halloran's.
And that was what Joe and the rest of them were doing. Laughing at me.
And the kids playing hide-and-go-seek were playing tricks on me and they were laughing at me too. The people at the party were a bunch of blurred faces all looking down and laughing at me.
"Look at him. His face is red."
"He's blushing.
Charlie's blushing."
"Hey, Ellen, what'd you do to Charlie?
I never saw ' him act like this before."
"Boy, Ellen sure got him worked up."
I didn't know what to do or where to turn. Her rubbing up against me made me feel funny.
Everyone was laughing at me and all of a sudden I felt naked.
I wanted to hide myself so they wouldn't see.
I ran out of the apartment.
It was a large apartment house with lots of halls and I couldn't find my way to the staircase.
I forgot all about the elevator.
Then, after, I found the stairs and ran out into the street and walked for a long time before I went to my room.
I never knew before that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around just to make fun of me.
Now I know what they mean when they say "to pull a Charlie Gordon."
I'm ashamed.
And another thing. I dreamed about that girl Ellen dancing and rubbing up against me and when I woke up the sheets were wet and messy.
April 13
Still didn't go back to work at the bakery.
I told Mrs. Flynn, my landlady, to call and tell Mr. Donner I'm sick.
Mrs. Flynn looks at me lately like she's scared of me.
I think it's a good thing about finding out how everybody laughs at me. I thought about it a lot.
It's because I'm so dumb and I don't even know when I'm doing something dumb.
People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can.
Anyway, now I know I'm getting a little smarter every day.
I know punctuation, and I can spell good.
I like to look up all the hard words in the dictionary and I remember them.
And I try to write these progress reports very careful but that's hard to do.
I am reading a lot now, and Miss Kinnian says I read very fast.
And I even understand a lot of the things I'm reading about, and they stay in my mind.
There are times when I can close my eyes and think of a page and it all comes back like a picture. But other things come into my head too. Sometimes I close my eyes and I see a clear picture.