The Poem

Second Grade, Mrs. Pannier, and the "P" word. I'm not real proud of this one, but it's true -- so here it goes.

I somehow got it in my 7-year-old head that I could write poetry. The good news is that, even at 7, I knew that my first few efforts were poor. The bad news is that I thought that I could fool the world.

It was autumn, and I was trying to write a poem about it -- you know, lots of easy topics -- leaves, football, chill in the air, halloween, etc. When I failed to write anything fridge-worthy, I checked out a poetry book from the library to give me some ideas. I found a poem that I liked -- mostly because it mentioned apple cider and had a fox. I really, really like apple cider and foxes seemed pretty smart. (Btw, cider is unprocessed, is usually dark brown, cloudy and perishable, whereas juice is further processed and has a longer shelf life -- I like them both, but I prefer cider.)

Since this poem was good and had two cool things in it, I thought I'd try to write a similar poem. I gave it two or three shots before I figured out that it would just be easier to write the same words on a different piece of paper and pass it off as my own.

Mrs. Pannier was always one of my favorites. I'm not sure why she didn't call me out on the obvious plagiary -- I thought I fooled her for a long time -- but I still think she was a good teacher.

Soccer is cool!