When I Was One-and-Twenty
I was in my final year of college, and doing my student teaching, when this poem struck a cord with me. The second week into student teaching my supervising teacher, Dixie Boothby, became seriously ill and missed three weeks of work. Dixie was nearing the end of her career and very set in her ways. She had just started to let me work with a single class when she became ill.
Her substitute and I hit it off right away. She either trusted me, or wanted to reduce her workload, but in any case she gave me three of the six classes during her first week. The next week she added a fourth, and by the time Dixie recovered, I had them all. All of that disappeared the day Dixie returned. She took all the classes back and weaned me slowly into the game over the next several weeks.
I sat in isolation much of the time. It was during this down time that I started to explore the literature book the class used, and fell upon the poem, “When I was One and Twenty.” It spoke to me.
I was having a challenging time with the girl I believed to be the love of my life. At least the love of my life during my senior year. She was perplexing, thus my attraction to the poem. I read it multiple times each day for several weeks. In the process it locked itself tightly in my memory bank. It’s still stuck there.
About five years ago. during one lazy afternoon with Brady, Eva and David we had a discussion of poetry. I don’t recall what started the conversation, but we all joined in. Brady and I decided to recite poetry. I rattled off my A.E. Housman poem and part of a poem that one of my upper elementary school classes had written as a group. It started like this:
In ancient Egypt there lived a Pharaoh.
Instead of clothes he wore a barrel.
He rode through town in a golden chariot.
His favorite TV show was Ozzie and Harriet.
Brady rattled off a couple poems that he had memorized for class. It was an intellectual exchange like nothing we had experienced before. Late in our banter we challenged each other to a poetry writing contest. David and Eva served as judges. Our writing was timed yet spontaneous. The only rule was the poem needed to be at least four lines long.
Mine read as follows:
There once was a man from France
who ran around in his underpants.
He had a girlfriend whose name was Eva.
She was beautiful – a real diva.
Brady’s entry was a personal expose about me. I’m sure he meant me no harm. He was just playing with words a fifth grader might use. I’ve saved his original in case he becomes famous some day. Original works often become very valuable.
Although I don’t think either one will make publication other than on your blog, I vote for yours because all four lines seem to go together. I do like the fact that you seem to be his friend but watch out you don’t catch his bug and get soupy poopy!
Please let us know who wins??