George by Hilaire Belloc

When I was in junior high our teacher assigned us the task of memorizing a poem which we were to repeat to the class.  On a scale of one to stark raving terror, this assignment had me sweating with intense dread.  Not only was there the looming death of public speaking but it was combined with the potential humiliation of forgetting ones lines plus the further potential of shame if one managed to pick the wrong poem. The only thing that could have made it worse would have been if we had been asked to compose the poem.  Thankfully, that little extra slice of dread was not thrust upon us and we were allowed to select any poem we liked.

Junior high school is a training ground for the intense dog eat dog world that would eventually greet us all when we entered the corporate world.  There were factions and clicks and partnerships that had been developed over the process of years as many of these children had gone to school together since kindergarten.  I, however, was a newcomer from over 200 miles away and since I was in one of the most intensely awkward periods of my life I did not fit in very well.  So, I was very concerned with choosing a poetry topic that would cause the least amount of embarrassment and ill will from my classmates.

Considering that we were all teenagers between 13 and 15 years old, anything even slightly romantic was certain to be fodder for all sorts of embarrassment.  The same went for anything remotely meaningful or overly florid in descriptions.  This seemed to leave historical poetry along the lines of Sacajawea or something about the American Revolution.  Now I had already in an earlier grade memorized "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - all 13 stanzas which I had repeated perfectly to my step-father on the night before my school assignment.  He offered to pay me a dime for every line that I got right which was probably before he saw that there was 130 lines.  So I headed to school the next day, $13 richer and felt ready to wow them with my poem.

When it was my turn, I got up and began "Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.  On the eighteenth of April in seventy five, hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year" (that part sticks with me to this very day, but the other lines are gone from my memory).  I went on from there, and on, and on and as my fellow students became glazed eyed and sagging in their seats from my monotonous but purely accurate rendition.  Around line 90, the teacher seized upon a momentary pause as I drew in breath and said "Well, that is wonderful!" in a bright and too chipper voice, "Who knew one could memorize such a long poem."  I offered to continue, but she told me I had done enough.  "A +, A +," she said and urged me back to my seat.

It was this successful, even though slightly embarrassing event that was on my mind as I sought the perfect poem.  Nothing too long I reminded myself as I looked for something I could memorize.  A somewhat friendly girl who lived near me had already picked her poem and I mentioned to her I had not found one yet.  She offered me a poem that her sister had used a few years earlier in another class.  I read the poem and thought it was funny.  Humor! Yes, that would be the ticket to avoid ridicule.  Get them laughing and who knows, they might even like you.  Or at least not dislike you as much.  I was after all, realistic about my social standings.

I practiced this poem over and over again, trying to add animation and emotion to each line.  This would be my debut into being less disliked and being thought of as funny.  Oh yes, they were going to at least think of me as funny.  With this aim in mind I tried different voices for the poem and settled on what I thought was a slightly British accent.

The day came and I was on pins and needles, ready to do my poem, but I was one of the last ones to present as luck would have it.   My other classmates had picked many worthy poems and one even took the lyrics from a John Denver song.  The teacher was lavish with praise for their efforts.  Regarding the John Denver lyrics I think she became a little teary eyed.  I noticed that none of the other poems had a humorous style, so I felt that mine would be well received for its unique quality.  Finally it was my time to present.  I was very nervous, but also excited.

This is the poem I recited from memory for my teacher and class:

George

When Georgie's Grandmama was told
that George had been as good as gold,
she promised in the afternoon
to buy him an immense balloon.

And so she did, but when it came
it got into the candle flame
and being of a dangerous sort
exploded with a loud rapport.

The lights went out, the windows broke,
the room was filled with reeking smoke,
and in the darkness shrieks and yells
were mingled with electric bells
and falling masonry and groans
and crunching as of broken bones
and dreadful shrieks, when worst of all,
the house itself began to fall,
it tottered wavering to and fro
then crashed into the street below,
which happened to be Saville Row.

When help arrived among the dead
were cousin Larry and little Fred,
the footmen, both of them, the groom,
the man who cleaned the billiard room,
the chaplain and the bar room maid,
and I am dreadfully afraid that
Monsieur Champanion the chef
will now be permanently deaf,
and both his aides are much the same.

While George, who was in part to blame,
received you will regret to hear,
a nasty bump behind his ear.

The moral is that little boys
should not be given dangerous toys.

I was smiling throughout the rendition and doing my best to add life to the lines, even though my nervousness was robbing me of some of the heights of brilliance I had achieved in my practice.  Still, all in all, I felt I was doing a good job - I even remembered to touch my index finger to behind my ear when reciting the line about the nasty bump.  I figured my classmates and my teacher were barely containing their laughter.

When I finished there was complete and total silence.  This went on as I looked expectantly at the teacher.  She had her hand on her throat and a rather strange look on her face.  Finally she spoke.  "Well, that just goes to show that some poems just talk about nonsense."  The class did respond with laughter to this and several of my classmates gave me knowing smirks.  Great. Not only did I fail to achieve a humorous response, now I was going to be thought of as the 'nonsense girl'.  She gave me a B.  When I got the sheet back we turned in with our poems she had scrawled along with the B, "You need to take life a little more seriously."

I chose not to take her advice.  Since my classmates now thought of me as the 'nonsense girl', I knew that any hope of them accepting me as an equal was a complete waste of time.  Actually this little scenario brought home to me a basic truth that sustained me all the way through junior high and high school.  I was not going to be popular, they were not going to understand me and I was not like them so it was pointless to try and fit in.  Thus I began my first forays into what I consider my standup comedy routine, the junior high years.  Sometimes this involved saying inane things and sometimes it involved slapstick humor, but I learned what every jester knows - if they are going to be laughing at you anyway then why not give them something to laugh about. 

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P.S. The poem as written here is recited from my memory, so there are a couple of errors.  In all my years since memorizing that poem I never recalled knowing who was the author.  Thanks to the wonder of the internet I now know it was Hilaire Belloc.  He was a very prolific writer in the early twentieth century and known best for his cautionary verse which aside from 'George' also included 'Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion' and 'Matilda, who told lies and was burnt to death', so considering this, I think my class got off easy.

As for his life, this little passage from Wikipedia caught my eye:

"He was powerfully built, with great stamina, and walked extensively in Britain and Europe. While courting his future wife Elodie, whom he first met in 1890, the impecunious Belloc walked a good part of the way from the midwest of the United States to her home in northern California, paying for lodging at remote farm houses and ranches by sketching the owners and reciting poetry."

So dear junior high teacher, whose name I have happily forgotten - I think Mr. Hilaire Belloc took life plenty seriously but he could find the humor in it.