Glory Days, Yeah, They'll Pass You By

I watched "Pauly Shore is Dead" last night. It is HILARIOUS and I highly recommend it. It almost makes me hope Pauly experiences a new start in his acting career. Almost.

I was exchanging stories about being a kid with one of the attorneys I work for, like we do once in a while, and I said to him, "You know, I've noticed when we have these conversations that most of my best stories I can come up with are from my elementary school days. Have you noticed?" He said not really, but that I do have a lot of stories from elementary school. I think he was being nice.

For some people, high school is what they consider the prime of their lives, and then they spend most of adulthood trying to live up to the glory, popularity, and general coolness that seem to continually elude them from graduation on. This has always struck me as rather sad (in the literal way, not necessarily the pathetic way). However, the "rather sad" category has been ramped up into a new definition now that I have realized that the only thing sadder is if your glory days were from kindergarten through sixth grade, which apparently, mine were. What happens to me if "the best is yet to come" doesn't apply to me if I tapped out all of my good story resources by the age of 12? This can't be it, can it? CAN IT? Welcome to my Freak Out. Glad you could make it; have some punch.

So since I'm in the mood to share, I leave you with something from my Glory Days. Now, you would think it was singing Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life" with Julie Smith in the sixth grade talent show. Or following that song with my stunningly coreographed dance routine to Patti LaBelle's "New Attitude." Note to my future daughter, should I have one: practicing your dance moves on the soccer field at recess to Janet Jackson's "Control" album will not necessarily make you prime backup dancer material. Mommy knows this; she tried it. Also, continuous somersaulting does not equal dancing.

No, it's Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky." One of my very favorite poems of all time, and the poem that catapulted me to sixth grade stardom as the clincher in securing me the award for Most Poems Memorized and Perfectly Recited (17 of them) that year. My teacher, Mrs. Julius, just felt that we needed to memorize as many poems as we could, and so I attacked it with gusto.

Nevermind the fact that it now seems my Glory Days are strictly confined to the sixth grade alone, thus drastically reducing my coolness factor even more. Besides, there's never enough opportunity for someone to say that they were "catapulted to stardom", even if that may not be an exact recollection of the facts. Let's just enjoy the poem:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.