Imprint by Seuss

I lament that there is no one here to read Dr. Seuss to anymore.  I read enough Dr. Seuss to six kids over the years to be very fluent in charming nonsense.  I flumoxed the daughter of friends once years ago, who brought me Green Eggs and Ham to read, and typical to three year olds, lost patience with its length and closed the book on my hands; I simply continued the lines and she stared at me. "I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam I Am."  "Try them, try them and you may.  Try them and you may, I say."  I think she opened it again and handed it back to me to keep going.  I would not actually have been able to continue without visuals to the end, but it was indicative of the fact that it was a favorite of the moment at our house, and if you have little kids, you know that means repeats ad infinitum. (And sometimes, you feel, ad nauseum.)

There are multiple Seuss-buttons in my brain.  If someone says, "(sigh) and so..." one of those buttons chimes in with, "And so, so so so--I will show you another good thing that I know," from The Cat in the Hat.  If I ever lose my faculties in old age and start rambling in my dementia, some of those non-sequiters will probably arise from those buttons not staying silent.  I guarantee they've been triggering in my brain all along, they just haven't been coming out my mouth.

No one should grow up without Sneetches, or Horton.  My second daughter was very small, her older sister was very tall (got a rhyme going, I should run with that--).  Full grown they are now 5'1" and 5'9" but Christina would read Horton Hears a Who voraciously as a four or five-year-old, "and their whole world was saved by the smallest of all!"  Nothing wrong with her sense of self--she would climb up onto the arm of the couch and declare, "I'm the tallest of all!"  In high school, still small, she could intimidate big guys when she turned fierce--but I digress.

Horton gets another run as the sit-in for Lazy Bird Mayzie, and hatches an elephant bird against all nature when she returns very, very late to her nest because "The work was all done, so she wanted it back."   But it was Horton who gets the joy, and "it should be, it should be, it should be like that! 'Cause Horton was faithful, he sat and he sat."  There's Yertle, and the Cat in the Hat, Cindy Lou Who who was not more than two and the Grinch (He puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore.  Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store; maybe Christmas, he thought, means a little bit more) with his patient dog Max, and one that I never see:  Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?  It has various only-Suess scenarios with Who-looking sad sack characters demonstrating how unhappy their lots in life are.  "Some people are muchly, oh ever so muchly, so muchly much much more unlucky than you."  And you are quite ready to agree.

DR. Suess's ABC Book is a delight, and I used to be able to recite the whole thing.  He mixes up the cadence and sequences and it never is dull. I can still rattle off some of the letters:  Big A, little a, what begins with A?  Aunt Annie's alligator, A a A;  Big N, little n, what begins with those?  Nine new neckties and a nightshirt and a nose.  And (painfully), Big V, little v, Vera Violet Vinn...is very very VERY AWFUL on her violin.

I find that I can't recall the page for G.  The book is probably still up in the attic, but I think just for today I'll just improvise.
                           Big G, little g, what begins with G?  My son Geoff, and his little Geoff-REE!

So grab a book by Dr. Seuss to read out loud--for camouflage find a small child first--and have a smile today.