This week’s choice is “Sick” by Shel Silverstein, to mark the couple of days this week I’ve been feeling rotten. I’m feeling better now, thank goodness!
My leg is cut—my eyes are blue—
Shel Silverstein (1930—1999)
It might be instamatic flu.
Poem 394. Sick
“I cannot go to school today,”
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more—that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut—my eyes are blue—
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke—
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is—what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is…Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”
This poem has always made me smile since I first encountered it on the album “Seven Ages: An Anthology of Poetry with Music” where it was read by Catherine McCormack.
Shel Silverstein was drawing and writing at an early age and his creativity led him through university and the military and a stint in Chicago selling hot dogs at ballparks while he submitted his cartoons to magazines. In time, he was taken up by Sports Illustrated and This Week before becoming a leading cartoonist for Playboy. He was a songwriter and is credited with Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” and Dr Hook’s “Sylvia’s Mother” amongst many others. He was a great example of the old American success story—the child of an immigrant father who reached the pinnacles before his untimely death at the age of 68.
The progressively more outrageous supposed medical conditions that little Peggy Ann McKay advances as reasons for not going to school are increasingly entertaining as we all have the suspicion that Peggy just doesn’t want to go—the dénouement confirms this suspicion as the malingerer discovers that it’s not a school day and instantly forgets her inventory of maladies and makes an excited (and swift) exit.
I admire Silverstein’s inventiveness in managing to find ways to rhyme all these theoretical illnesses (some of which are completely fictional) in a way that we can imagine coming out of a child’s mouth and I do enjoy the final lines where Peggy, having spent all her energy on thinking up excuses, has evidently forgotten what day it is and that there’s no need for any of them. Oh well, it’s good practice and I bet the instamatic flu makes a reappearance one schoolday. Come to think of it, it might be useful on a workday too…
There’s an entertaining performance by Emilie, aged five (four years ago) on the YouTube channel and an animation from the film “Poetry for Fun” on The Unpopular Archive channel.