How to do nothing with nobody all alone by yourself
First sentence
"If things were as they should be, another kid would be telling you how to do these things, or you'd be telling another kid. But since I'm the only kid left around who knows how to to these things--I'm forty-two years old, but about these things I'm still a kid--I guess it's up to me."...
Description
Here are some things you can do following the instructions in this book: Make a spool tank (a homemade windup toy that creeps forward slowly like an army tank); a "button buzz-saw;" a handkerchief parachute; a harmless handkerchief "blackjack." Make a squeaky noise with two blades of grass. Do cool things with dandelion stems and leaves. Make a little basket out of burrs. Put your name on a pencil. Give a pencil a decorative checkerboard grip. Play Mumbly-Peg with a boy scout knife. Make a bracelet out of a clamshell. Make a needle dart. Make a leather sucker. Play "killers" with horse chestnuts. Make a Spanish bolas with horse chestnuts. Make a bull-roarer, an indoor boomerang, an outdoor boomerang, several kinds of slingshot, a throwing-stick. Make a bow and arrow out of a broken umbrella. Make polly-noses from maple tree wing things. Pop jewel-weed pods. Make pussy-willow bees and cats. Make a pin piano. Make a "bavoom-thing," a peach-pit basket, a rubber-band-powered paddlewheel boat, a paper airplane, a paper helicopter, and a thing made from a wishbone that surprises people by jumping suddenly into the air.