English Is A Strange Language When You Are Six

My sister had given me papers that either Mom or Dad had saved. (I’m not sure, she’ll remember where she had them.)

I’ve been scanning them so they’re saved. I have no idea who would want the damn things! I did find a book of rhyming poems I must have done in first grade. I know it wasn’t second grade because we were learning cursive. (Do they still teach cursive writing?) Each little haiku type poem had it own page, complete with illustrations. (Do they still make kids do this stuff by hand and not on a damn computer? God I hope so.)

By the way, I have no idea who those other four kids/people might be.

Some of these make sense…..

My new sled
Is brown and red.

(I remember that sled! A Flexible Flyer.)

Beautiful flowers.
All ours.

Roses, daffodils and pansies stick out in my mind. I vividly remembering weeding white and red roses, ruthlessly tended by Mr. Kracsoy the Hungarian gardening man. He, no matter what my mother wanted, planted and cared for those white and red roses. Trust me, Mary Louise, had no choice or voice as to what was going in that flower bed next to the driveway. "Ve vill plant Rrrrr-ozes!" A Hungarian can make a five-letter word into about sixty syllables.

Thus, my Grandmother Knerly/Racoszzky/Kossa's exclamation of: "Oh, darrrrr-linkkk, Grrrand-mmma lll-ufffs you so moochhchch." To this day, if I hear someone say "Darling" in that particular manner, all bets are off. They are Hungarian.
To continue:

The boy
Had a toy.

There was a house
Who had a mouse.

In a few, we see that English really is a very confusing language. What SOUNDS right ain’t how it’s spelled!

The little girl
Had a cirl.

I bet it’s from that nursery rhyme Mom used to quote:
"There was a little girl/Who had a little curl/Right in the middle of her forehead."
Etc.

There is a man
Holling a can.

For a moment, I thought it said “holing.” That brought several extremely weird, random things into my head.

There was a Joe
He was a Croe

An Existential Thought:
There was a pan
Is there a Dan.

A Question.
Can I have some fat
To make a cat.
(Ah-ha! So THAT’S how you do it!)

There was a hen
Who’s name was men.
And yes, the picture shows a hen wearing a shirt that says “men” on it, thus justifying her name. See above!


There was dog
Who’s name was hog.
The dog does not have a shirt with his name on it.

There was a bee
Who had a key.

That could actually work…. The key to the hive? The key to happiness?

There was a hen
Eating a pen.
Not good for the hen. It was not the kind you write with but an area of containment.

There was a car
Eating a candy bar.
Shades of Herbie, perhaps? Or Kit the car on Knight Rider, which was on the Boob Tube way after I wrote this.. I obviously was getting hungry while I was writing.

There was a cat
Inside a bat.
One hell of a big bat!

Did you see boaty
Who had a goaty.

(I was stretching here.) When I just read it now, decades later, I thought it said BOOTY and GOOTY at first.

My first thought was, “Huh?”

At some point, I bet the teacher said, “You have to use your name in a poem.” This can work well if your name is Michelle (Bell). Or Mitch (Hitch, Bitch, etc.) Or Hillary (Pillory?) But Mary? And my full real name Mary Ellen? It gets tough..

There was a lary Hlen’
Who had a Mary Ellen

There was a tary
Who had a Mary.

Don’t ask me what a tary is. To tarry, yes.

And a “lary Hlen’?” I have no idea. I probably didn’t know then but it sounded good!