NATCHEZ — Picking up the yo-yo as a child is as common as playing with a bouncy ball or participating in youth sports.

Look in the deepest recesses of any child’s closet and a yo-yo likely will be found there, its string tangled and knotted.

But the mastery of the skill and art of yo-yos are as rare nowadays as calligraphy.

Cathedral School eighth-grade student Rankin Reynolds is well on his way, though.

“It’s not as hard as people think,” he said.

He effortlessly slings his yo-yo around into various tricks while waiting for his mother Cynthia Reynolds to pick him up after school.

“Some moves take a day to learn, some take a month,” he said.

Rankin has been working at the hobby for almost a year.

“I watched some people doing it,” he said. “And I knew that I could do it.”

So he picked it up and got to work.

“He has put in a lot of practice,” Cynthia said. “But it seems to us that he’s a natural.”

“Every night he would be showing us something knew that he learned.”

Each time Rankin learned a new skill, his mother would be wowed even more.

“He has always been someone that if he sets his mind to something, he will do great at it,” she said. “But he amazes me.”

“If I was doing it, I would be in knots.”

For Rankin, it is just a hobby, but it is the potential of new tricks that keeps him coming back.

“There are always new things to learn,” he said.