An Unlikely Tutor

Mark Gerber and I weren’t always on the best of terms.
He told me Mrs. Price was a witch. He tried to hog my pedal car fire truck, so I hit him across the chest with my Wiffle Ball bat. He liked to call me a little baby who played with little baby toys, coveting those toys even as he said it. He could be your best pal one day, your mortal enemy the next. Who knows what his motives were. Maybe he was picked on by the kids his own age and took it out on me. He couldn’t pronounce his brother Billy’s name when he was small. It came out “Bull” instead of Bill, so he always called his older brother “Bull.” Even I teased him about that.
Imagine my surprise when one spring day in 1959 he decided he would teach me how to hit and catch a ball!
He even got his brother “Bull” to help out with my education.
He was watching my pitiful attempts at throwing up a Wiffle Ball and trying to hit it around the yard. I failed at almost every try.
I don’t know if Mark felt sorry or embarrassed for me, or if he felt that this would be a good way to torture me, but he came over to my yard and told me that he and his brother were going to teach me how to do it right.
They spent the better part of the day pitching Wiffle Balls at me, encouraging and laughing,demonstrating and observing. I must have swung that bat a million times or more. Every time I missed, Mark Gerber would have some kind of unkind remark waiting in the wings. His brother would just laugh and shake his head until I got it right. I thought I saw Mark wince every time I swung the bat, in remembrance of the fire truck incident the summer before.
When they were satisfied that I could hit reasonably well, they made me practice catching.
I went through the usual trials, closing my hands too soon, turning my head away and getting beaned.
More insults,more laughter at my expense.
After a few hours of this I wasn’t quite the embarrassment I had been, and they told me that with a little more practice, I'd be ready to play ball with them.
Mark Gerber, the Eddie Haskell in my world. He could be your pal or he could be a weasel and a worm.
He spent a day doing something nice. He helped me. He gave me confidence in something I wasn’t very good at when he could have been doing something else.
He taught me to how use a bat on a ball instead of on him.