From an English Teacher

All the world's a stage... what? no?

Depressed lately. Decided to rummage around in my room for no apparent reason but to have something to stave off the bad feelings, when I stumbled across a series of notebooks I hadn't touched in a long time.

Once upon a time I wanted to be a writer, and I had an entire journal full of short stories, poetry, and observations. This was different from most of my current notebooks in that it's actually pretty organized--I'd have the first draft of a story I had in mind written out by hand on the pages. Then I would apparently leave a few pages blank if I had any other story in mind to write, because then I'd have the first draft typed up and editted, and then I'd print that out and paste it into the book. That draft would be editted and then I'd paste that into the book until I had my final draft. I had notebooks upon notebooks of actual completed, 4 times editted short stories and poems, which I can't boast now. All i have now are projects that are started and never finished.

Anyway, after becoming depressed about my current state in comparison to how it used to be, I began flipping through more notebooks and found this poem in there. Musta written it when I was 15. I had a lot of poetry, but while I think the mid-teen years are typically the time to write angsty free-verse self-absorbed tripe, I always tended to write silly things (like a poem I think I showcased here once about a gopher being run over by a lawn mower...huh). Shel Silverstein was always a hero, I guess. Not much has changed.

I can't, though, for the life of me remember if this was supposed to be a parody of something, though I have a small tune in my head when I read it. I'll figure it out eventually.