To Recite

Me. Swinging. And reciting.Words are amazing.Descriptive.Alliterative.Explanatory.Lyrical.Adventurous.Romantic...And I love them.I learned at a very early age that they could be assembled in ways that were truly magical.Let me explain . . .My Dad loved to recite.Poems, mostly.On long car trips, he would inevitably break into song.Or verse.I especially loved the rhythm of his chosen poetry.Always there was a story involved.The boy stood on the burning deckHis feet were in the fire.The captain said," You're burning up!"The boy said, "You're a liar!"The telling was truly magical.And often educational.Little Johnny took a drink.But he shall drink no more.'Cause what he thought was H2O,Was H2SO4.I should mention that that particular verse earned all six of my children kudos in high school chemistry class.Moving on . . .I determined that, when I grew up, I would be JUST LIKE DAD.When I was five, my oldest sister, then just entering junior high, was labouring over a Language Arts assignment.Memorizing a poem.She had chosen, for her effort, the Hillaire Belloc poem, Jim. A cautionary tale of a boy who runs away from his nurse at the zoo and is eaten by a lion.What better poem for a young girl to start with?As my sister laboured over the lines, so did I.I should probably point out, here, that I couldn't read yet.My patient sister rehearsed each line to me until I had it.I should also mention that I really didn't understand what I was saying.Apart from the whole “boy eaten by a lion” bit.I followed her around for days.“What's the next line, Chris?”She would tell me.And I would repeat it, ad infinitum, for hours.Or until Chris got home from school and gave me another.I'm sure my mother heard, “And gave him tea and cakes and jam and slices of delicious ham” in her dreams.Moving on . . .By the end of a week, I had it.All of it.Then, the fun began.For months afterwards, my parents would trot me out at family reunions and local bridge parties to show how their young daughter could recite heart-stopping tales of misbehaviour and woe.In perfect rhyme.It could only lead to a career in writing.Or the stage.P.S. I still love poetry!