Life Is Too Short to Live without Poetry
As hard as it may be to believe, The Captain’s legitimates are polite, well behaved human beings and have consistently been recognized for their behavior on their school report cards: “A pleasure to have in class!” was the constant refrain. The only issue for the two older legits was homework – my son developed a severe allergy to it and my daughter just can’t seem to stop doing it. But Eldest Son of The Captain is now in college and Eldest Daughter of The Captain is on summer vacation and slowly getting re-acclimated to the outside world. Between the two, however, not a single call from the Principal’s office. Youngest Son of The Captain (YSOTC), a delightful ginger with a propensity for mischief to match his father’s, has generated two calls. The first was in 2nd grade, when the Principal wanted to discuss the definition of “appropriate” lunch room behavior. With a sincerity and gravity befitting the topic, our “pal” was concerned about reports of YSOTC telling off color jokes at the lunch table at great risk to the impressionable minds present, and none more so than the wet noodle of the lunch lady who registered the complaint on behalf of the innocent babes obliviously constructing food sculptures with their uneaten lunches. After I stopped laughi…er, coughing, I asked Mr. Pal for examples of off color jokes so that I could go straight home and congratu…uh, use them in a lecture I’d prepare especially for YSOTC to articulate the potential dangers of humor, the primary being that it makes people laugh. He said that he could not repeat the jokes because he can’t tell a jo…um, remember the exact wording. But he did refer to the offending words as “Irish jokes.” I thanked him for his valuable feedback and went straight home to have YSOTC reenact the lunch room interactions, with yours truly playing the part of the kid making dinosaur figures out of baloney, using real processed sandwich meat for verisimilitude. He could only recall telling one Irish joke, to no effect, as it flew over the tender heads of his lunch buddies like a stealth bomber. In the interest of clinical research, I will share the joke.
“Two Irish guys walk out of a bar…”
For that, I took time out of my busy day to visit the Principal at CBPS. Trust me on this one, the kid has a far more potent arsenal of jokes than this one; I’m sure he was just warming up.
But the boy took direction and learned to tell jokes where no adult could eavesdrop and made it all the way to 6th grade before I got my second call. This time the culprit was a poem he’d written as part of a class assignment. According to his teacher, it was dark and like nothing she’d ever seen from a 6th grader. She clearly knew nothing about the boy’s father. So once again I was called into the Principal’s office to meet with his teacher. This time they brought in the school counselor as well, concerned with the creative yet “disturbing” death imagery in the poem about a Boston Cream doughnut (this is not a typo). Read it yourself and draw your own conclusions.
If you were offended by this poem, please let me know the precise nature of your wound to help me understand. For my part, I chuckled when I read it and thought: “I’m suddenly hungry for a Boston Cream doughnut.” Alas, I have little hope that I will understand the offense. The maker of the universe made me the way I am, defects and all, and I find irony and humor in all things. Apparently YSOTC has inherited this trait. He can no more change his personality than he can a woman’s mind. But I will leave you with some wise words from the venerable George Bernard Shaw.
"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
Believe The Captain when he says: The only steel rack I want to see is the one inside the doughnut shop!!
Yours squeezing the cream out of my doughnut into my coffee,
The Captain
Ps: The blog title was lifted from a (great) song by the inestimable Frank Turner, English country folk singer. Check him out here.
As hard as it may be to believe, The Captain’s legitimates are polite, well behaved human beings and have consistently been recognized for their behavior on their school report cards: “A pleasure to have in class!” was the constant refrain. The only issue for the two older legits was homework – my son developed a severe allergy to it and my daughter just can’t seem to stop doing it. But Eldest Son of The Captain is now in college and Eldest Daughter of The Captain is on summer vacation and slowly getting re-acclimated to the outside world. Between the two, however, not a single call from the Principal’s office. Youngest Son of The Captain (YSOTC), a delightful ginger with a propensity for mischief to match his father’s, has generated two calls. The first was in 2nd grade, when the Principal wanted to discuss the definition of “appropriate” lunch room behavior. With a sincerity and gravity befitting the topic, our “pal” was concerned about reports of YSOTC telling off color jokes at the lunch table at great risk to the impressionable minds present, and none more so than the wet noodle of the lunch lady who registered the complaint on behalf of the innocent babes obliviously constructing food sculptures with their uneaten lunches. After I stopped laughi…er, coughing, I asked Mr. Pal for examples of off color jokes so that I could go straight home and congratu…uh, use them in a lecture I’d prepare especially for YSOTC to articulate the potential dangers of humor, the primary being that it makes people laugh. He said that he could not repeat the jokes because he can’t tell a jo…um, remember the exact wording. But he did refer to the offending words as “Irish jokes.” I thanked him for his valuable feedback and went straight home to have YSOTC reenact the lunch room interactions, with yours truly playing the part of the kid making dinosaur figures out of baloney, using real processed sandwich meat for verisimilitude. He could only recall telling one Irish joke, to no effect, as it flew over the tender heads of his lunch buddies like a stealth bomber. In the interest of clinical research, I will share the joke.
“Two Irish guys walk out of a bar…”
For that, I took time out of my busy day to visit the Principal at CBPS. Trust me on this one, the kid has a far more potent arsenal of jokes than this one; I’m sure he was just warming up.
But the boy took direction and learned to tell jokes where no adult could eavesdrop and made it all the way to 6th grade before I got my second call. This time the culprit was a poem he’d written as part of a class assignment. According to his teacher, it was dark and like nothing she’d ever seen from a 6th grader. She clearly knew nothing about the boy’s father. So once again I was called into the Principal’s office to meet with his teacher. This time they brought in the school counselor as well, concerned with the creative yet “disturbing” death imagery in the poem about a Boston Cream doughnut (this is not a typo). Read it yourself and draw your own conclusions.
DOUGHNUT
His father beat him when he was a child;
But in a kindly way,
A way that formed his circular shape.
He went to fry-oven college,
But was sadly murdered when he got out,
Stabbed by a friend of his father.
Prior to the funeral, he was stuffed with an embalming cream
That apparently came from Boston,
And fitted with rich brown clothes.
For the funeral, he was laid on a cold steel rack with others like him
And given away to be buried
6 inches down
In someone’s stomach.
A doughnut.
If you were offended by this poem, please let me know the precise nature of your wound to help me understand. For my part, I chuckled when I read it and thought: “I’m suddenly hungry for a Boston Cream doughnut.” Alas, I have little hope that I will understand the offense. The maker of the universe made me the way I am, defects and all, and I find irony and humor in all things. Apparently YSOTC has inherited this trait. He can no more change his personality than he can a woman’s mind. But I will leave you with some wise words from the venerable George Bernard Shaw.
"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
Believe The Captain when he says: The only steel rack I want to see is the one inside the doughnut shop!!
Yours squeezing the cream out of my doughnut into my coffee,
The Captain
Ps: The blog title was lifted from a (great) song by the inestimable Frank Turner, English country folk singer. Check him out here.
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