Memory Lane

The golden era of most of our lives remains 'The School Days'.
I still remember the pleasant boyish spirits we had.
The careless attitudes that attributed to all the perkiness of our lives.
I miss the adventures, the buoyant emotions, the mindless gags, the irresponsible lads and all the chirpy characters of my childhood today.

This an attempt to revisit those forgotten landmarks that made us what we are today.

Following is a poem that most of us must have read in our school days.
This is one of those writings that gets imprinted in your memory and you want to read it again and again to remind you of those beautiful years of your life.

Confessions of a Born Spectator


One infant grows up and becomes a jokey
Another plays basketball or hockey

This one the prize ring hates to enter
That one becomes a tackle or center

I am just glad as glad can be
That I am not them, that they are not me

With all my heart I do admire
Athletes who sweat for fun or hire

Who take the field in gaudy pomp
And maim each other as they romp

My limp and bashful spirit feeds
On other people's heroic deeds

Now A runs ninety yards to score
B knocks the champion to floor

C risking vertebrae and spine
Lashes his steed across the line

You'd think my ego it would please
To swap positions with one of these

Well ego it might be pleased enough
But zealous athletes ply so rough

They do not ever in their dealings
Consider one another's feelings

I am glad that when my struggle begins
Twixt prudence an ego, prudence wins

When swollen eye meets gnarled first
When snaps the knee, and cracks the wrist

When officialdom demands
Is there a doctor in stands ?

My soul in true thanksgiving speaks
For this modest of physiques

Athletes, I'll drink to you
Or eat with you
Or anything except compete with you

Buy tickets worth their radium
to watch you gamble in the stadium

An reassure myself anew
That you are not me and I am not you.

By : Ogden Nash


Here's another one from the same author, I enjoy reading or listening to often.
His acute sense of observation thrilled us when we were kids and his unusual capability to convert his opinions into melodies remains spectacular till this day.

This is going to hurt just a little bit.

One thing I like less than most things, is sitting in a dentist chair
with my mouth wide open.

And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.

It is hard to be self possessed,
with your jaw digging into your chest.

So hard to retain your calm,
when your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line, love line
or some other important line of your palm.

So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity,
when you know your position is one of the two or three in life most lacking in dignity.

And your mouth is like a section of the road that is being worked on,
and it is cluttered with stone crushers and concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers,
and there isn't a nerve in your head that you aren't being irked on.

Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs.

And others have things done to their gums,
And your teeth are supposed to be being polished,
But you have reasons to believe they are being demolished.

And the circumstances that add most to your terror,
Is that it's all done with a mirror,
Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say,
only they were referring a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,

But all the same, how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one hand 
and mirror in the other he wont get mixed up, 
the way you do when you try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror,
and forget that left is right and vice versa?

And then at last he says, that will be all,
but it isn't because he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof,
with something that I suspect is generally used to put a shine on a horse's hoof.

And you totter to your feet and think, Well it's over now and after all it was only this once.
And he says come back in three monce.

And this O fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou sentest,
That man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition
when the chief reason he wants his teeth in good condition
is so that he won't have to go to the dentist.

By : Ogden Nash  

    
The Frog and The Nightingale

Once upon a time a frog
Croaked away in Bingle Bog
Every night from dusk to dawn
He croaked away awn & awn & awn
Other creatures loathed his voice,
But, alas, they had no choice,
And the crass cacophony
Blared out from the Suamc tree
At whose foot the frog each night
Minstrelled on till morning night.

Neither stones, nor prayers, nor sticks,
Insults or complaints or bricks,
Stilled the frog's determination
To display his heart's elation.
But one night a nightingale
In the moonlight cold & pale
Perched upon the Sumac tree
Casting forth her melody
Dumbstruck sat the gaping frog
and the whole admiring bog
Stared towards the Sumac, rapt.

And, when she had ended, clapped,
Ducks had swum and herons waded
To her as she serenaded
And a solitary loon
Wept, beneath the summer moon.
Toads and teals and tiddlers, captured
By her voice, cheered on, enraptured.
"Bravo!" "Too divine!" "Encore!"
So the nightingale once more,
Quite unused to such applause,
Sang till dawn without a pause.

Next night when the nightingale
Shook her head and twitched her tail,
Closed her eye and fluffed a wing
And had cleared her throat to sing
She was startled by a croak.
"Sorry - was that you who spoke?"
She enquired when the frog
Hopped towards her from the bog.
"Yes," the frog replied.
"You see, I'm the frog who owns this tree
In this bog I've long been known
for my splendid baritone
And, of course, I wield my pen
For Bog Trumpet now & then."