Crawling Arnold

THE STORY: Barry and Grace Enterprise, a couple in their seventies, have two sons; one a thriving two-year-old and the other Arnold, a young man in his thirties who crawls on all fours, insists on a lemon peel in his martini, and is forever misplacing his coloring book. The Enterprises also have a lavish air raid shelter complete with a library of old Our Gang movies and four years' worth of Readers Digest back copies; plus a rather snippy black maid whose feelings have been ruffled by their offer of a separate-but-equal shelter for her. As for Arnold, the Enterprises' concern about him has led to a consultation with Miss Sympathy, a pert, young psychiatric social worker who comes by to do what she can to help straighten him out-and up. She and Arnold are hitting it off rather well when the alert sounds for an air raid drill, and it's down to the shelter for everyone-except that Millie, the maid, has already locked herself in, and the white imperialists out. So Miss Sympathy joins Arnold on the floor (an accepted crisis position) and their increasingly intimate confessions continue to an off-stage obligato by the senior Enterprises. Arnold admits that he has rediscovered the forgotten value of being naughty, and Miss Sympathy concedes that she finds him overpoweringly attractive but what if the all-clear should sound? But it won't. It's broken. That's what Arnold did that was naughty today.Feiffer, Jules is the author of 'Crawling Arnold ', published 1963 under ISBN 9780822202479 and ISBN 0822202476.