Down at the Dinghy

Told in two distinct segments, the first involves a discussion between two house servants about their employer’s little boy, who has a history of running away. The second segment explores the mother's efforts to reassure her son and help him cope with his fears. The story opens with the two house servants, Mrs. Snell and Sandra, discussing the homeowner's young son, Lionel. Sandra is very worried that Lionel will tell Boo Boo (Mrs. Tannenbaum), her employer, that Sandra has made some anti-Semitic remarks about Lionel’s Jewish father (“gonna have a nose just like his father” [8]). Boo Boo finds Lionel in a dinghy preparing to cast off, and refuses to allow his mother to join him. Boo Boo pretends to be admiral of the imaginary ship in order to win Lionel over and discover why he is trying to run away. He resists, even going so far as to throw his uncle Seymour's old goggles into the lake. Lionel tells Boo Boo that Sandra called his father a "big sloppy kike".[9] While he doesn't know what this ethnic slur means, conflating the epithet “kike” with “kite”, he nevertheless grasps its derogatory connotation. Boo Boo, in an effort to reassure the boy and help him cope with the episode, succeeds in providing him insights into her own needs and the love she feels for him. At the end of the story, they race across the beach toward home, and Lionel wins.

J. D. Salinger

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