Cheaper by the Dozen

consideration for me."
    "I'll try again," Mother said patiently. But you could tell she knew it was hopeless.
    Once they had gone down to the beach, Dad would take her hand and lead her. Mother would start out bravely enough, hot would begin holding back about the time the water got to her knees. We'd form a ring around her and offer her what encouragement we could.
    "That's the girl, Mother," we'd say. "It's not going to hurt you. Look at me. Look at me."
    "Please don't splash," Mother would say. "You know how I hate to be splashed."
    "For Lord's sakes, Lillie," said Dad. "Come out deeper."
    "Isn't this deep enough?"
    "You can't learn to swim if you're hard aground."
    "No matter how deep we go, I always end up aground anyway."
    "Don't be scared, now. Come on. This time it will be different. You'll see."
    Dad towed her out until the water was just above her waist.
    "Now the first thing you have to do," he said, "is to learn the a dead man's float. If a dead man can do it, so can you."
    "I don't even like its name. It sounds ominous."
    "Like this, Mother. Look at me."
    "You kids clear out," said Dad. "But, Lillie, if the children can do it, you, a grown woman, should be able to. Come on now. You can't help but float, because the human body, when inflated with air, is lighter than water."
    "You know I always sink."
    "That was last year. Try it now. Be a sport. I won't let any thing happen to you."
    "I don't want to."
    "You don't want to show the white feather in front of all the kids."
    "I don't care if I show the whole albatross," Mother said. "But I don't suppose I'll have another minute's peace until I try it. So here goes. And remember, I'm counting on you not to let anything happen to me."
    "You'll float. Don't worry."
    Mother took a deep breath, stretched herself out on the surface, and sank like a stone. Dad waited a while, still convinced that under the laws of physics she must ultimately rise. When she didn't, he finally reached down in disgust and fished her up. Mother was gagging, choking up water, and furious.
    "See what I mean?" she finally managed.
    Dad was furious, too. "Are you sure you didn't do that on purpose?" he asked her.
    "Mercy, Maud," Mother sputtered. "Mercy, mercy, Maud. Do you think I like it down there in Davey Jones' locker?"
    "Davey Jones' locker," scoffed Dad. "Why you weren't even four feet under water. You weren't even in his attic."
    "Well, it seemed like his locker to me. And I'm never going down there again. You ought to be convinced by now that Archimedes' principle simply doesn't apply, so far as I am concerned."
    Coughing and blowing her nose, Mother started for the beach.
    "I still don't understand it," Dad muttered. "She's right. It completely refutes Archimedes."

    Dad had promised before we came to Nantucket that there would be no formal studying—no language records and no school books. He kept his promise, although we found he was always teaching us things informally, when our backs were turned.
    For instance, there was the matter of the Morse code.
    "I have a way to teach you the code without any studying," he announced one day at lunch.
    We said we didn't want to learn the code, that we didn't want to learn anything until school started in the fall.
    "There's no studying," said Dad, "and the ones who learn it first will get rewards. The ones who don't learn it are going to wish they had."
    After lunch, he got a small paint brush and a can of black enamel, and locked himself in the lavatory, where he painted the alphabet in code on the wall.
    For the next three days Dad was busy with his paint brush, writing code over the whitewash in every room in The Shoe. On the ceiling in the dormitory bedrooms, he wrote the alphabet together with key words, whose accents were a reminder of the code for the various letters. It went like this: A, dot-dash, a-BOUT; B, dash-dot-dot-dot, BOIS-ter-ous-ly; C, dash-dot-dash-dot, CARE-less CHILD-ren; D, dash-dot-dot, DAN-ger-ous, etc.
    When you lay on your back, dozing, the words kept going through your head, and you'd find yourself saying, "DAN-ger-ous, dash-dot-dot, DAN-ger-ous."
    He painted secret messages in code on the walls of the front porch and dining room.
    "What do they say, Daddy?" we asked him.
    "Many things," he replied mysteriously. "Many secret things and many things of great humor."
    We went into the bedrooms and copied the code alphabet on pieces of paper. Then, referring to the paper, we started translating Dad's messages.