I've been asked a lot lately what I want for Christmas and every time I'm asked I have no idea what to say because I really don't know what I want for Christmas. It was so much easier when I was little and my family could just get me something simple and easy without having to ask me what I wanted and I would usually love it just because of the surprise factor.
When I was ten my grandpa gave me the book Falling Up by Shel Silverstein and this was probably one of the best gifts I have ever been given. I had every poem in the book read by Boxing day and tried to speak only in rhyme up until New Year's. Now, that book is so well-read that the bindings are held together with string and I still have many of the poems memorized word for word.
I don't know if this gift was perfect because of a lucky guess or because my grandpa just knew what I would like. Either way, it made a certain impression on me that I haven't been able to forget (not that I should!). I've branched out a bit from "God's Wheel" and "Snowball" and "Long-Leg Lou and Short-Leg Sue", but I still always go back to them because it's poems like this that really turned me on to poetry when I was small.
I don't know where I was going with this except to say that I think children now don't experience that, and it's a bit sad.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment