aging, comic verse, Guilt, laziness, mortality, obituary, stupidity, True story, wordplay April 30, 2026April 30, 2026 2 Minutes

Slow On The Uptake.
I'm one of those fuddy folk of a certain age
Who finds Tik Tok type 'news' fails to engage,
I thumb through my old Skool paper page to page.
The newspaper allows you time to get to the gist,
Let you leisurely read stories you may have missed,
Though sometimes the tale comes with a cruel twist. 
This morn I sadly found I have just cause
To cease my reading, sigh, and give due pause
And consider Life's swings, roundabouts and see-saws.*
A name in the obits caught my eye...
A teacher of mine had been called on high,
And I thought back mistily of times long gone by.
From Kindy on I was a kid who'd not be taught,
Despite what may be writ in the attendance report
This kid was absent from class in deed, act and thought.
But Diane strove to engage the fast and slow,
Even a 
cretin certain bozo slouched in the back row
Who made it yawningly obvious he didn't want to know.
To me English and Mathematics made zero sense,
I cared not one jot about present, past or future tense,
And who could make sense of pounds, shillings and pence?
School learnings would never be my strong suit-
Who gave a hoot about some number's square root?
So I stayed slumped on my 
backside seat, resolutely mute.
Who needed this brain-draining schooling?
Leave me a'slumbering, snoring and drooling:
All the better to spend the afternoon playfooling.
So I continued on my disengaged way,
I had no interest in what Teacher might say,
Till she started reading to us at the end of the day.
When she read us Ogden Nash and Denis Glover,
C. S. Lewis and Lewis Carrol, who led me to discover
This poor student would soon morph into a Literary lover.
I grew intrigued by English's quirks,
Found limericks brought on knowing smirks
After seeking out Algy Swineburne's saucier works.
What comical creations could be seen and heard-
Like Spike Milligan's loonish leaps off into the absurd-
Peter Cook's masterly manipulations of the written word.
What a boyish joy in English I now found,
But Maths remained wholly unknown ground-
Laughter, not long division help the world go round.
Now all of a sudden on a steep learning I embarked,
Now a startling interest in learning had been sparked,
Now I didn't want my report card to be blackly marked.
(Word-wise, Diane had indeed opened the door,
But on two given subjects I'd revert back 
ass as before,
Maths plus Science would remain a misery mystery evermore.)
Now many years later I can look back
And think of why and when I changed tack,
And how lucky I was to be shown the right track.
If Diane hadn't sparked this love of literature
Where and when I'd now be is up for conjecture...
I'd not be a man with a blameless record, that's fer sure.
At minimum I'd be a ne'er-do-well,
At maximum I'd be in for a decent spell,
Redoing another sentence in a cold grey cell.
So I say Diane was one of a kind,
She saw this dumb kid, wilfully blind
And opened my ears and eyes and mind.
*See-saws in American English are teeter-totters, and a roundabout is a merry-go-round. 

 'The kind of kid who makes the best of teachers lose hope.'

'Don't know much about history,
Don't know much biology,
Don't know much about a science book,
Don't know much about the French I took.'
'Don't know about geography,
Don't know much trigonometry,
Don't much about algebra,
Don't know what a slide rule is for.'
Sam Cooke, 'Wonderful World.'

©Obbverse.

Published April 30, 2026April 30, 2026