Yo-yo? Oh, yeah!

If a yo-yo craze happens every eight to 10 years, as four-time Washington state yo-yo champ Chris Cook believes, then the kids at the Otis Orchards Library are way ahead of their time.

Cook, featured at the library's weekly summer activity program Thursday afternoon, undoubtedly started a new wave of yo-yo enthusiasts with his world-quality routine.

"If it weren't perceived as a kid's toy, it could be an Olympic event," he said, throwing the yo-yo into a looping, leaping maneuver difficult to describe. "That's not just a trick. It's an art."

Armed with 20 of his best yo-yos, which he carries in a suitcase that more resembles a bullet-proof carrier for precious jewels, Cook performed a choreographed routine to taped music as the children laughed, oohed and ahhed.

"That was really fun," said wide-eyed 9-year-old Kayla Counts, who immediately after Cook's performance bought herself a yo-yo.

Name the trick, Cook does it with grace, style and ease: Walk the Dog, Rock the Baby, the Sleeper, the Dog Bite.

Cook's act isn't limited to a visual circus performance. He jokes while he entertains. After Walking the Dog - letting the spinning yo- yo walk on the ground in front of him - he told it to sit, then dragged the motionless yo-yo behind him. "This is called Walking the Dead Dog," he said, as kids erupted into laughter.

"It doesn't matter that these kids' great-grandparents might have yo-yoed way back then, it's still cool," said Cook. The 43-year-old Spokane man, who also plays trumpet with the Spokane Symphony, caught the yo-yo bug himself several years ago while watching comedian Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers do a yo-yo routine.

"As a kid I was just OK, but here was a grown man doing it and I was mesmerized," he said.

Cook poured himself into learning the skill, and within a year won the first in a string of four consecutive Washington state yo-yo championships that began in 1991. He's since stopped competing because, he said, he has nothing more to prove.

Still, he enjoys an odd sort of celebrity while traveling the world for yo-yo promotions and demonstrations.

Asked why yo-yoing appeals to all generations and cultures, he smiles: "Let me show you." Again, adjectives can't describe the loops, leaps and general vaudeville Cook can do with a spinning spool and string.

Cook, who wrote a book on antique yo-yo collecting (and has over 1,000 in his own collection), praises the sport for promoting patience, diligence and practice in children willing to learn.

The bug is contagious. Eleven-year-old Justin Long was blown away at the step-by-step teaching Cook provided at the Otis Orchards Library while performing several tricks.

"I learned some pretty cool stuff," the young yo-yo man says. "I can't wait to teach my friends."

Copyright 2002 Cowles Publishing Company
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