Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the little old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man.
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1 comment:
A quick Googling tells me that this is a Shel Silverstein poem.
I used to love Where The Sidewalk Ends when I was a kid.
I Wikipedia'd Shel and had one of those flashbacks in time that only teh internets can give you.
When I was probably elementary school-age, I was playing at a school-mate from Bryn Mawr’s house whose name I could not remember who told me that Shel was her dad.
I was like "um, ok" thinking that she was making this up because Where The Sidewalk Ends was so popular.
Well just now I read this on Wikipedia:
Silverstein had two children. His first child was daughter Shoshanna (Shanna), born June 30, 1970, with Susan Hastings. Susan Hastings died 5 years later, on June 29, 1975, in Baltimore, Maryland. Shoshanna's aunt and uncle, Meg and Curtis Marshall, raised Shanna from the age of 5 until her death of a cerebral aneurysm in Baltimore on April 24, 1982 at the age of 11. Shanna was attending the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore at the time of her death. Silverstein dedicated his 1983 reprint of Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros to the Marshalls. Had Shanna lived, she would have been 28 at the time of Silverstein's death. A Light in the Attic was dedicated to Shanna, and Silverstein drew the sign with a flower attached. Shoshanna means lily or rose in Hebrew.
Now I remember when Shanna Marshall died, and wondering how something like that could happen to an 11-year-old with no warning. I didn't realize until just now that that was the girl who "claimed" to be Shel Silverstein's daughter.
Wow.
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