Expression Lessons

Mrs. Gray's Expression Lessons. My mother enrolled my brother and me in her beginners' class when he was in the first grade and I was in the third. The house was across the street from the football field and had a separate entrance to the 'theater.'

The room had a stage, wings and a seating area for the audience. Mrs. Gray stressed that she was not giving acting lessons. That was good because I couldn't act. My brother, on the other hand, was a natural.

She expected a lot of memory work. Paying attention proved to be the key to remembering. Everyone in the class sat quietly and listened while she told a story. Then she assigned parts, and we went to the stage and acted out, interpreted, the story. 

I think the hardest thing she ever asked me to do was pretend to be one of the characters in a Nativity tableau. There was no acting or speaking. We took our places and didn't move for five minutes. Excruciating.

Besides performing, we also memorized poetry and recited it. At the end of the term of lessons, there was a recital with our parents and grandparents as special guests.

At the event, my brother recited the following poem, Elf and the Dormouse.

I found this cute illustration on Art Side.

It was published in 2012 and gives credit for borrowing it from a 2011 post on Marge8's Blog.

It is slightly hard to read, so here are the words:

'The Elf and the Dormouse'

Under a toadstool crept a wee Elf,
Out of the rain to shelter himself.
Under the toadstool, sound asleep,
Sat a big Dormouse all in a heap.
Trembled the wee Elf, frightened and yet
Fearing to fly away lest he get wet.
To the next shelter—maybe a mile!
Sudden the wee Elf smiled a wee smile.
Tugged till the toadstool toppled in two.
Holding it over him, gaily he flew.
Soon he was safe home, dry as could be.
Soon woke the Dormouse—'Good gracious me!'
'Where is my toadstool?' loud he lamented.
—And that’s how umbrellas first were invented.

Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

My brother was a trooper when he stood on the stage and recited the poem. It went without a hitch until the last line when he said, "Where is my toadstool? loud he lamented. -- And that's how umbrellas first were convented."

Everyone laughed. From the wings, Mrs. Gray whispered: "invented." During the reception afterward, Mrs. Gray told my parents that 'convented' worked much better in the poem. She was considering having future classes say it just like that. For years, at our house, my dad said convented instead of invented if the word came up in conversation.

The next year when Mrs. Gray opened up enrollment for another class, we were given the option to participate or not. I declined, but my brother went for two or three more years. 

"Ja-ack, get out of the cookies."

My grandmother's best friend was Pauline Degarmo. My dad and his siblings knew her as Auntie Pauline. She didn't have children of her own and doted on them when she came to visit. A published poet, she wrote under the name Pauline Degarmo Wilkerson.

In The Window of Prayer, the publisher prefaces the book with these words:  'Pauline Wilkerson's poetry is filled with gentle surprises. Her eye and ear are extremely sensitive to places, to atmosphere, words and tones of speaking, but this exactitude does not narrow her vision; she evokes the intimacy of a shared past; she writes not only of religious experience but of the small events of her days, described with reverence. Her feeling for children is revealed in the many poignant poems she writes about them.'

Another of her works is titled There Is No Rhyme for Silver.

She was a prolific poetess with a gift for taking an ordinary word and weaving a poem around it. A popular guest at ladies' afternoon teas, she sent everyone in attendance home with an original, hand-written poem themed on the word they had suggested. She must have dreamed in AABB couplets.

This evocative poem, simply called Shopping, was inspired by her friendship with my grandmother and her intimate knowledge of my dad when he was a youngster.

While shopping at the dimestore

Just the other day--

I'd gathered up my parcels

And started on my way,

When I saw a boy looking at cookie jars:

And this is what he did--

He carefully inspected them

Lifting up each lid.

When asked if he found one

He wanted to buy

This I heard him say,

"I want a nice gift-

For my mom--you know--

It's for Mother's Day."

The clerk said, "A cookie jar's real nice,

"I'm sure she'll be surprised."

Then he looked at her so skeptically

With doubt in his big green eyes.

"I don't think any of these will do;

For they all have lids that rattle.

When I sneak a cooky now and then--

I don't want the jar to tattle!"

Perspective

Recently, writers have attempted to refresh old stories by changing up the perspective. Rewriting the Cinderella fairy tale from the perspective of the wicked step-mother, or having the Big Bad Wolf tell about the Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood is interesting as long as a child has already heard the original. Trisha Speed Shaskan has a cute idea, but she is far from the first to tell "the other side of the story."

Many years ago an author whose name has been lost to history, wrote a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to Darwin's theory of evolution.

My dad owned a plaque with this poem when my brother and I were very young. He may have gotten it when he was in the Army in 1954. In 2010, someone who doesn't identify himself wrote a blog tribute to the poem and included excerpts from letters to Dear Abby wherein the writers claimed this person or that person actually wrote it. If I could find Dad's plaque, which may have been broken years ago, it might mention an author. Memory says it gives the credit to Anonymous. I know Someone Somewhere wrote it at least sixty-five years ago.
  
The Monkeys Disgrace

Three monkeys sat in a coconut tree
Discussing things as they're said to be.
Said one to another, "Now listen, you two,
There's a certain rumor that cannot be true,
That man descends from our noble race -
The very idea is a disgrace.

No monkey ever deserted his wife,
Starved her babies and ruined her life;
And you've never known a mother monk
To leave her babies with others to bunk,
Or pass them on from one to another
Til they scarcely know who is their mother.

And another thing you'll never see -
A monk build a fence around a coconut tree
And let the coconuts go to waste,
Forbidding all other monks to taste.
Why, if I put a fence around this tree,
Starvation would force you to steal from me.

Here's another thing a monk won't do -
Go out at night and get on a stew,
Or use a gun or club or knife
To take some other monkey's life;

Yes, Man Descended - That ornery cuss -
But, brother, he didn't descend from us!"
     - anonymous

reference:
http://lvtfan.typepad.com/lvtfans_blog/2010/02/the-monkeys-disgrace.html