The Short Story: The Wringer By Jerry Spinelli

The book the Wringer written by Jerry Spinelli is about a young boy named Palmer, who is afraid of his 10 birthday. This all started when he was really young, because in his town every year his town has a family fest where at the end of the day the people who paid get to shoot pigeons in the soccer field. Which if you are 10 years old you are a wringer which means you run out on the field and break the necks of any pigeon that doesn’t die, And he had a bird hit him after it was shot and a kid snapped its neck right in front of him. After this scene we go to just before his 9th birthday party, where he becomes friends with the really popular kids(or as known to him later “hoodlums”) Beans, Mutto, and Henry. He also got the nickname Snots from …show more content…
When Palmer finished getting ready he went out his window and they walked off into the woods. After some time walking in the woods they stopped in a small clearing where the pigeons were stored in white crates. After this moment for a large amount of pages they just play outside and bully a girl they call Fishface. Fishface’s name is Dorothy and she lives across the street from Palmer. They play multiple pranks on her from what they call treetrunking which is standing in someone's way so that they have to go around you, to nailing a dead muskrat to her door. But during this time Palmer keeps a secret, he has a pet pigeon that comes to his house every night and sleeps in his closest. Palmer slowly grows closer to this pigeon and after sometime keeping this secret from everybody he breaks and tells Dorothy. She goes to his house and also started to become close to the pigeon, but she also starts to grow closer to Palmer making them become very good friends after about a month. By this time he starts to get nervous because his 10th birthday is coming very quickly and then Palmer starts to hide the pigeon, so that Beans and his guys don't try to kill the …show more content…
He then has them bullying him and trying to break in to get the pigeon. After a week of this Palmer gives the pigeon to Dorothy so she can set him free. After this he invites Henry into his house to see if the pigeon was gone, after Henry confirms the pigeon is gone they bully him less. But now it’s close to family fest and Palmer is 10 so he goes to training for wringers. He hates it there, but he went through it so he wouldn't be an outcast. Though on the day before family fest he breaks and yells at all of the guys and runs home. On the day of the family fest he ask Dorothy where she let the pigeon go and she said the railroad, which is where they get the pigeons for family fest. So he goes to family fest hoping that his pigeon isn’t there, but his pigeon is there and almost gets shot twice. But after his pigeon landed on his head a kid grabbed it and through it to the ground and told the shooter to shoot it. The shooter then grabbed a shell and started to load his rifle, but Palmer grabbed his pigeon which made the whole crowd boo. As he slowly walked away a small kid said “mom can I have one,