When Yo-Yos Ruled the Day. I Am Still a Master - Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

When Yo-Yos Ruled the Day. I Am Still a Master - Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

As I approach this time of year when the brisk mornings of autumn announce that fall and oceans of color are around the corner, I think of those days when we returned after summer vacation to elementary school. I was tired of summer, and yes, I looked forward to school.

Across from The Academy Avenue School was a destination, Abe’s Variety. Fronting the store was an arena; well not an arena but rather a narrow sidewalk where we met the dexterous Duncan Yo-Yo man who not only was master of all the Yo-Yo tricks but also was an artist who carved designs on the faces of those spinners. We stood in line awaiting his free-of-charge drawings.

The Yo-Yo is simple; an axle connected to two disks with a string looped around the axle. It is a toy dating to 500 BCE. Fast forward to 1946, when the Duncan Toys Company opened a factory in Luck, Wisconsin. Duncan was king.

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I practiced every day, first mastering the most fundamental trick, the sleeper. It’s the most common throw and the basis for nearly all the others. The Yo-Yo is thrown downward briskly enough to snap to the end of the string and spin in place as in “Watch this Yo-Yo sleep, Maria.” (first girlfriend). The longer the spin, the better the mastery. And as you touch it to the ground, you are now ‘walkin the doggie.’ With a flick it walks back up the string to the hand like a magnet, grabbed and ready to be thrown again.

While the Yo-Yo is sleeping, one can execute tricks like the elevator, around the world, or the more complex rock the baby. I loved ‘around the world.’ While the yo-yo was sleeping, I twirled it in a 360-degree arc where it remained until flicked back. Once, when practicing in our tight-quartered living room, the string snapped, and my Yo-Yo hit the window and spider-cracked it. That may have been my greatest trick of all as it had a legacy. Dad was not appreciative.

The throw takes more practice. The spool is flipped outwards with a  pronounced wrist action so that when the yo-yo reaches the end of the string it flips back again and again, round and round she goes. But my favorite and most successful trick, the show stopper, the one that even today stuns the grandchildren is ‘the dog bites the baby’s butt.’ It’s simple but requires one important gimmick. Ya gotta be wearin’ loose pants.

Out the Yo-Yo goes and with a fast flick, up and back through the legs, another flick up, and NIP! BITE! That baby catches the pants at the crotch (Watch out!). If I executed it to perfection, I could walk around while the Yo-Yo held tight to my pants, just northwest of my crotch.

I collect Yo-Yos. I still have a bag of tricks, still mastering around the world, and walk the doggie, but the one that wows the grandchildren, the highlight, is when that doggy bites my pants.