My First Poem...

That last post about Bo dog was probably the longest post I've ever written. And while I was working on it, I was really frustrated that I couldn't find a picture of him with a tennis ball. In every day life, it was next to impossible to find that dog without a tennis ball. And I knew that I had one displayed at my workstation. So I got out a big giant box of old pictures and letters and went through them all. And I found some. And while I was at it, I organized them in to groups. Here's the groups I came up with:

-Family/Growing Up
-High School
-College
-Post College/Pre-Rachel
-Grown Up 1
-Grown Up 2
-658 Louise Ave
-Travis and Julie
-Scott and Kimra
-SSG
-Letters and Such

I also found a lot of weird random things from my past. A lot of notes passed in high school. I forgot about the HUGE crush I had for a while on Heidi Triple. And Suzanne Olsen. And Lara Hoth. And so on. Those will be fun for the reunion. And I found some deep letters from some girl who was apparently a great friend during my first years at college, but I can't remember who she was.

And then I found this:



It is the first poem I ever wrote. A haiku. I made that in Summer School between kindergarden and 1st grade. I showed it to Ted, and he said there's no way I was writing cursive back then. But I've thought about it, and I'm sure it's right because that frog died while I was in First Grade. I remember Mrs. Boyle called the house to see if I was OK emotionally. SEe, there was the frog, and then I found a toad. And we had the terrarium in class. And the school janitor used to catch worms in the morning to feed them both. Then Dad caught a lizard and we put it in the terrarium. We were worried either the big toad would eat the lizard or the lizard would eat the frog. The little frog tried to eat the lizard. When we got to class one morning, the frog had the lizard swallowed up to the front legs. The janitor took them away.

And I think that was the only time I went to Summer School.

I remember we were studying Japanese language and culture, so I'm sure the jibberish is Kanji, and probably fairly accurate. And my printing was much better then than it is now. The picture is of a terrarium on top of my dresser with my pet frog jumping out of it. That dresser was my Mom's dresser when she was growing up. Now it's Jake's dresser.

The haiku reads:

I have a pet frog (5)
I have had it for a year (7)
He likes to jump high (5)

I counted the syllables for you there. I wonder if I tried to learn Kanji now if it would all come back to me.

Glenn - do you have any artwork from that age? If you do, post it.

Anyway - sometimes I wonder where I went wrong. I mean, I'm no dummy, and I still have a quick mind and all. And I'm fairly creative. And I've accomplished a lot in my life so far. And I am fairly confident there are some great things still ahead of me.

But when I come across things like that haiku and picture, I can't help but think that maybe I peaked too soon - like at age 5. I was in the MGM- "Mentally Gifted Minor" program in 1st and 2nd grade. We went to a special school one day per week. And I was learning the metric system, and how batteries work, and doing experiments with plants in light and dark and in the referigerator and all. My teacher was Dr. Love. And when I got to 3rd grade, we moved to Novato and the MGM program there required you to go to a special school all the time. So my parents decided to keep me in regular school. Later, when I was at Cal, there was another guy in my dorm from Daly City who was in that same class with Dr. Love.

So I tracked right early.

But the metric system never quite caught on, did it? I remember them telling us that by 1980, everything would be metric.

What happened?