Child Development

Drawing by Charles M. Schultz


Child Development

As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into
forests working up some irregular verbs
for their first conversation, so three-
year-old children enter the phase of
name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives
and is added to the repertoire.
You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface,
You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level,
their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother
tossing out in a pub, but then
the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous
Enlightenment hack.

They are just tormenting
their fellow squirts
or going after the attention
of the giants way up there
with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense
to other giants,
waiting to call them names
after thanking them
for the lovely party
and hearing the door close.

The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten
to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are
Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves
are Mr. Sillypants.

Billy Collins

Posted over on Poemhunter