Ohio

“Hey, kid,” says Kerr. “What’s round on both ends and high in the middle?”
     And the kid, who is Thom, looks back at us blankly and says, “I dunno, what?”
     He’s new to town, and here we are, the only other boys in the neighbourhood, blocking him out of the playground, and screaming out the answer together—“O-oooooh–HI–o-oooooh!”—and laughing . . . at him, of course, not the riddle.
     But he smiles all the same. “O-oooooooh!” he says, like he’s just discovered our deepest secret, turned our joke against us, and knows it’ll be years before we figure it out.