Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key

These chapters provide anecdotal illustrations of the difficulties that children who have ADHD face and the challenges of their caregivers. The house key is both a source of pride and trouble Joey. When he reflects upon the rules involved with his being home alone until his mother’s return from work, the reader learns that he was once assaulted by “mean kids” from the neighborhood on the way home from school, so he’s happy to comply with a rule that forbids him from answering the door; he recalls another boy holding him down and tying a leash around his neck while demanding that Joey “Play dead” (31). Similarly, when he forgets the key at school, he “[…] lay down flat on the porch to hide from the bad kids” (47) for two hours until his mother arrives. These instances highlight several problems that exist for Joey: that of being victimized by other children and the consequences of his single mother’s attempts to care for him without physical or financial assistance.

This section highlights Joey’s difficulties with social interactions as well. Genuinely good-hearted and nurturing, he suffers watching Harold, who “[…] was in a neck brace and couldn’t blow out his own candle” (46) during his birthday celebration in the Special Ed room. He feels that the adults are not intervening appropriately, and he blows the candle out in an attempt to help the disabled child; however, he is sent to the Big Quiet Chair as a result. In the same way, Joey misinterprets social cues when dealing with his somewhat unscrupulous classmate, Seth Justman, who offers Joey a dollar if he agrees to swallow the house key that he had dropped in the toilet that morning. Seth takes advantage of Joey’s naivete again during the Amish country visit, when Joey literally interprets the ingredients of “shoofly” pie to include both shoes and flies. He encourages the boy to request extra flies on his slice of pie, revealing the cruelty of Joey’s peers and his gullibility.

“Acting before thinking,” or the lack of impulse control associated with Joey’s particular challenges, is involved when he swallows his house key without realizing that it is no longer connected to a string and when he jumps into the hay from a barn rafter rather than awaiting help. Children experiencing this disorder are overrepresented in terms of injuries—particularly boys. Joey’s exuberance and enthusiasm for trying new things may ultimately work to his advantage when he learns to channel them more effectively, but his childhood seems destined to be marked by accidents and injuries.

Another physiological component noted in the text relates to diet. Joey craves the sugary shoofly pie that he smells baking on the class trip, but his teacher forbids him to eat it, fearing the behavioral consequences; he has the same experience at Harold’s birthday celebration, when he is given a carrot instead of cake. Both teachers adhere to the dietary philosophy that dictates low consumption of sugars and refined carbohydrates and higher use of lean proteins in the diets of children like Joey. He describes the feeling that he experienced after consuming the shoofly pie as hearing “really loud static […] like tires speeding down a wet road and coming right at me” (63) prior to impulsively climbing into the barn rafters.

Finally, the author touches on the topic of parental guilt. When Joey overhears two mothers in the Special Ed room discussing the cause of a child’s disabilities, he questions his own mother as to her alcohol consumption during her pregnancy. She admits to daily glasses of wine and Amaretto; subsequently, Joey realizes that she is crying. The literature indicates that while prenatal alcohol consumption may be related to ADHD, it is not an inevitable result. Joey is left to wonder whether his mother’s tears are related to guilt or to “[…] the everyday sadness of her life with me” (50), suggesting Joey’s own guilt.