Carefully he dropped it into the toilet. When he pulled the handle, he knew, it would go into the pipes, into the ground, into the ocean, into the air, and then it would rain down. Lipsticks would rain down. And that would be interesting.

He almost pulled the flushing handle. But first, he decided, he would add more stuff.

He dropped in his plastic pretzel. Now it would rain lipsticks and pretzels. But that wasn't enough.

Sam looked around. He could see something interesting on the side of the bathroom sinka"Mom's earrings. He stood on tiptoes, reached the earrings, and added them.

One of his sneakers had come untied again and he pulled it off. Would it be interesting if sneakers rained down, with lipsticks and pretzels and earrings? Yes, Sam decided. So he dropped the sneaker into the toilet.

Now he was ready to flush.

Maybe, Sam thought suddenly, Mom would like to watch.

He went back to the kitchen. Mom was just putting something into the oven. "Hi, Sam," she said. "Are you getting into mischief?"

"Nope," Sam said.

"What happened to your shoe?" Mom asked.

Sam grinned. "Come see," he said. He tugged at her hand.

Mom followed him to the bathroom, and Sam pointed, showing her the wonderful flush he was about to make.

"Oh, nol" Mom said in a loud voice. She reached in and pulled out the dripping sneaker. She pulled out the pretzel. Then the lipstick. Then the earrings. She dropped all of the wet things into the sink.

She knelt on the floor beside Sam. She gave him a kiss. "Sam," she said. "None of those things likes to be in water. Not shoes. Not toys. Not lipsticks. Not Mom's earrings. They don't want to be wet. Do you understand?"

Sam nodded.

"Promise you won't do it again?"

Sam promised, and Mom went back to the kitchen. He did understand. What he needed was something that did like to be wet.

He thought about Dad's big black umbrella. But he knew it wouldn't fit.

Then he thought of the perfect thing. He went to Anastasia's room and turned the wastebasket upside down so that he could stand on it and reach her goldfish bowl. Anastasia's goldfish was named Frank.

And Frank loved water. Sam knew that for sure, because once he had dumped Frank out, and Anastasia had screamed and grabbed Frank and filled the bowl with water again even before she mopped up the floor. "Frank needs water," she had explained to Sam. "Frank is very frightened and unhappy if he doesn't have water."

Carefully Sam dipped his plastic clown cup into the goldfish bowl. "Frank," he said, "you will be very happy."

He wished that Anastasia were home, instead of outside riding her bike, so that she could see how happy he was making Frank.

Frank floated very happily in the clown cup all the way to the bathroom.

He loved it in the toilet, because the toilet was bigger than the goldfish bowl. Sam watched him swim in the toilet for a long time.

Now, thought Sam, you get to go in the pipes. Under the ground. Into the ocean. Up to the sky.

And then you will rain back down.

He pulled the handle. "Yaaayyyy!" Sam shouted happily as he watched Frank spin and swirl.

He ran to the kitchen.

"I flushed Frank!" Sam announced.

He couldn't figure out why Mom wasn't happy about it. Dad, when he came home from atwork, wasn't happy, either. Worst of all, when Anastasia came in, Mom and Dad told her about it in very sad, quiet voices. And Anastasia began to cry.

That night, from his crib, looking through his window, Sam watched the sky. He waited and waited for it to rain goldfish so that he could give Frank back to his sister. But it never, ever did.

4.

"Sam, I do wish you would be trained," his mother said one day as she was changing his diaper.

"No," said Sam. He said it very sweetly and smiled.

He didn't know what she meant. But he said no anyway. Sam liked saying no. It was an easier word to say than yes. And it always had a more interesting effect. When he said no, people sighed and frowned and scrunched their faces up. Sometimes his sister, Anastasia, got so mad that she shrieked when Sam said no.

Once, when Anastasia was getting Sam dressed for bed, she asked him, "Do you want to wear these pajamas, Sam? The ones with teddy bears on them?" She held them up.

"No," said Sam.

"Well," said Anastasia, "how about these? The ones with elephants?"

"No," said Sam.

Anastasia sighed and frowned and scrunched her face up. Soon, Sam knew, she would shriek. He waited, happily, for that.

His sister got another pair of pajamas. "These, then," she said. "The blue ones with a hole in the foot."

"No," Sam said loudly.

Then she shrieked. "MOM! Sam says no to everything!"

His mother was scrubbing the bathtub and picking up all the boats that Sam had been sailing during his bath. "Of course he does," she told Anastasia. "He's in the middle of the Terrible Twos."

Sam looked around himself with interest. He didn't see Terrible Twos anyplace. He was in the middle of the room, standing there wearing his Pampers.

He didn't know what his mother was talking about half the time. He was in the middle of the apartment. He was in the middle of the rug. Soon he would be in the middle of his crib. How could he be in the middle of the Terrible Twos? If there were Terrible Twos around, he couldn't see them.

Later that night, wearing his pajamas with teddy bears, after his light was out, he peeked out from under the covers to see if the Terrible Twos were out there. They sounded scary.

They weren't anywhere around, and he was quite certain his mother had been wrong. But he put his pillow over his head, just in case.

"If you would be trained," his mother said, b.u.t.toning his overalls, "you would be a big boy. You could dress yourself. You would never be wet. You wouldn't have to have that dumb box of Pampers."

Sam thought about that after he scampered away to play with his blocks. He liked that box of Pampers. He could stand on it and reach things. There was a lot of interesting stuff in Anastasia's room, on her desk: crayons, and some chewing gum, and a deck of cards with Ks and Qs, and a brand new goldfish, Frank the Second, in a bowl.

Sam planned to drag his Pampers box into Anastasia's room some day soon, when no one was looking, and stand on it and reach the top of her desk.

He would do his father's desk, too, because his father had a typewriter, and Sam liked to type stuff.

So it made no sense to Sam at all, when his mother said that about not having to have the box of Pampers anymore. He needed that big box of Pampers.

Still, he was fascinated by the idea of being "trained."

Sam knew about trains. He had books about trains. His favorite was The Little Engine That Could. Sometimes he made Mom read it to him two times before he went to sleep.

'"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,'" he and his mom would say together. Then: '"I thought I could! I thought I could!'" Sam loved that part best.

So he liked the idea of being trained himself. He stopped saying "no" when his mother sighed and said, "I wish you would be trained, Sam." He began saying "maybe."

He began saying "chugga chugga chugga" when he walked down the hall of the apartment. He was practicing being trained.

One day his mother came home from shopping. Sam was playing on the living room floor while his father watched a baseball game on TV. His father was supposed to be watching Sam; before she left, his mother had said, "Myron, will you watch Sam while I do the shopping?" And his father had said, "Sure." But he hadn't really watched Sam at all. He watched a baseball game instead.

When his mom came home, she said, "Sam, I brought you a present."

"Animal crackers?" Sam asked. Often she brought him a little box of animal crackers.

"Nope," his mother said. She reached into the bag she was holding and pulled out a little package. "Look! I brought you training pants!"

Sam took the little package and looked at it with interest. Training pants. He hadn't even known that train people wore special pants. Maybe he hadn't looked carefully enough at his favorite book.

He ran to get The Little Engine That Could. He sat down on the floor and turned the pages to look at the pictures again. The train didn't wear pants. The engineer wore pants, but they weren't white like the pants his mother had bought for him. The train engineer wore a special hat, though. It was striped, blue and white. He wore it on every page except the last, because on the last page, the engineer's hat flew off, right into the air, when the train said, "I thought I could!"

Sam trotted back to the living room, where his dad was still watching baseball.

"I want a training hat," Sam said.

"Ask your mom," Dad said. "She's in the kitchen."

Sam picked up the little package of training pants and went to the kitchen. "I don't want these," he said. "I want a training hat."

His mother sighed. "Look, Sam," she said. Carefully she opened up the package. She took out three pairs of pants. "See? They're just like Daddy's."

Sam looked. They were just like Daddy's, only smaller. Sometimes, while Sam watched, his daddy stood in the bathroom and shaved carefully around his beard. Sometimes his daddy wore training pants when he was shaving.

Sometimes his daddy walked down the hall to his bedroom, wearing training pants. But he never said "chugga chugga chugga."

"Don't you want to be like Daddy?" his mother asked.

Sam thought about that. He didn't want to have a beard, especially. He didn't want to watch baseball on TV. He loved his daddy, but he didn't want to be like his daddy, especially.

He wanted to be like the train guy in the book, and drive an engine, and wear a blue-and-white striped hat.

So Sam said "No" and gave the training pants back to his mother.

She looked exasperated. "Sam," she said, "don't you want to be toilet trained?"

Toilet trained? What did that mean? That was the weirdest thing he had ever heard. He wouldn't mind being freight trained. He wouldn't mind being pa.s.senger trained. He would love being circus trained, like the train in his favorite book.

But toilet trained?

"No," said Sam loudly. "No. No. No no no no no no."

And his mother began to shriek, just the way Anastasia did. "I CAN'T STAND THE TERRIBLE TWOS!" his mother shrieked.

Sam looked around, but the mysterious Terrible Twos were still invisible.

"I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I could," Sam sang as he chugga-chugged down the hall.

5.

"Sam," Anastasia said in a serious voice, "I have something very important to tell you. Horrible, awful news. You're going to hate it just as much as I do."

"What?" Sam asked. Anastasia had just changed his diapers and now she was trying to snap up his overalls. He liked it better with his legs bare, so he wiggled about.

"Hold still," Anastasia said, "and listen."

Sam stayed very still. He listened.

"We're moving," Anastasia said.

Sam stared at her. She was mistaken. He was being absolutely still. He wasn't moving at all.

"I'm not moving," Sam said.

"Yes, you are," Anastasia said. "We all are. Our whole family."

He continued to stare at her. It was true that she was moving. She was snapping his overalls, and in a minute she would put his sneakers on him, and tie them, which meant that her hands would be moving.