Childhood

Oh lookie, see what I found. My Autographs book from the ancient past. Brenda began cleaning out and organizing memorabilia stashed in the lovely old Chinese chest my mother bought on her honeymoon. Someone in the family gave me the book when I was pretty young. It was a fad to get your school friends and even smarter people if you could find them to write a clever verse or popular saying. Limericks were commonly employed too.

This is typical:
“It’s hard to part when friends are few,
And your heart is full of hope,
It’s harder still to find the towel
When your eyes are full of soap.”
Signed Viola. I wonder who Viola was!

One of my early teachers wrote:
“It was only a sunny smile,
And little it cost in the giving,
But it scattered the night
Like the morning light,
And made the day worth living.”

A grade school friend wrote:
“Roses are red
Violets are blue
I’m a nice squirrel
But nuts to you.”

Signatures of eternal friendship included such side-splitters as “Yours till grama-phones,” or “Yours till the ocean wears rubber pants.” Figure that one out. There were better ones, but it appears that at some point I used an early version of cut and paste, or simply cut.

The passage of a school year or two apparently did not increase the sophistication:
“Ain’t this school awful,
Ain’t this school funny,
We do the work
And we pay the money.”

“Down in the valley green grows the grass,
Came a little billy goat sliding on his ____,
Now don’t get flustered, don’t get red,
Poor little billy goat was sliding on his head.”

Simpler times? I wonder what kids today would write?