Annie LV: Annie's Desiderata

Annie took it upon herself to write a version of Desiderata after Raymond was assigned to read it in his Literature class.

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Go calmly amid the noise of the giant

And remember that peace lets you hear approaching footsteps.

The universe surrendered your body to those of greater scale;

There is no reason your soul must cooperate.

Snark often and well

And let others

Even the giant and ignorant,

Understand your defiance.

Be a loud and aggressive person

If only to level the playing field.

Even if you can’t outrun or outreach the giants

Do not become vain or bitter

As there will always be something you can do better than the Lurch.

Announce your achievements, just in case others may have missed them.

Keep an interest in your owner’s life. However superfluous,

It is a real thing with an impact on the changing focus of your destiny.

Exercise caution in your acquaintences,

For betrayal is an art form between scales.

But don’t let caution blind you to the possibility of friendship;

Many persons have a potential for trust

Even among vexatious giants.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection, unless chocolate is involved.

Be cynical in voice, but not your heart

For in the face of all asinine comments and insensitive movement by the overmassed,

There are base emotions you can depend on, though you cannot discuss.

Weigh all counsel against whether or not they’ve ever needed weapons to fend off a moth.

Gracefully surrender the things of youth. Like clothing. Privacy. Pets.

Nurture your giant’s spirit to make him addicted to you.

Do not distress yourself with dark imaginings,

For real life is distressful enough.

Your metabolism voids a need for exercise.

Rather, take time out for your spirit.

You are a child of the universe,

Rat bastard though Fate may appear to be.

You have rights….if you can convince your owner of that.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

The giant probably has a treat in his pocket.

Therefore be at peace with your owner,

Whatever your relationship may be

And wee only where it can easily be cleaned up.

Dance.

Except when assholes ask: Can you make her dance?

Be content with one candy bar on Halloween.

With care, it will last you until Thanksgivng.

And if that doesn’t argue for at least a little sympathy from Fate, nothing will.

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Coincidentally, Denise had a similar assignment, to read the poem and explain how one line impacted the student's life. She ended up having to explain the meaning of the whole poem to Pet. Who sat and thought about it and came up with her own take. Denise took that English assignment, and Pet’s response, and made a brief sketch she performed in Drama, pretending to be Pet.

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Try to stay quiet when it’s not your turn to talk because big people have big plans and they don’t always have time to indulge a sylph who wants attention.

And silence is golden.

Whenever it’s possible to be a nice person be a nice person. Even if the other person isn’t a nice person because that makes you the better person and it’s better to be better.

Breathe. Breathing is important. If you make a big whooshing noise as you take the breath then you’re still making noise and for everyone listening it counts as still talking so they won’t interrupt HEEEEEE-whoooooooooooooooosh and you still have the floor.

Avoid mean people unless you’re related to them then you just have to put up with their ess aitch aye tee until you can get away from them and go hide under the sofa and maybe, if they’re really mean, you can untie their shoes. Not that I’ve ever done that.

It’s okay to be big and it’s okay to be small and it’s okay to be weird and it’s okay to be normal even though that’s a hard idea to explain because no one’s really anything that you can call normal, they’re just the person in a group that’s closer to what everyone would approve of or understand than the other person or persons so really saying ‘I'm normal’ is saying ‘I'm more normal than’ someone else.

Take everything with a grain of salt because no one will ever be completely trustworthy because strangers don’t care and they will see you as some silly blonde to take advantage of and people who love you have to prove how much they love you by making you stamp your foot and scream about how silly they got you, thinking that they hated you when they just wanted an excuse to say ‘I love you’ by saying ‘you only threaten to throw people you love into the big pot of pudding.’ They should just say I love you straight out but they don’t. Meanies. But then if you cry about being teased you get as much of the pudding as you can eat while they apologize.

Practice crying. It increases the amount of pudding that lands in easy reach of your spoon. Just never use it to get pudding until after they tease you about the pudding. That makes them the manipulative jerks while you are the plucky innocent defending yourself. If you just cry when you want something you’re the spoiled brat like Mary Lou’s pet Grendel who jumps up and down and swears whenever he wants something and every time he wants me Denny just offers him pudding.

Don’t pretend to love people, even if you think you need to to get something to eat or someplace to sleep at night. You can pretend other things for that, like saying ‘yes, master’ as if it makes you happy to bend a knee to them or ‘no, ma’am,’ like they were queens and you were their loyal subject. If you keep searching though you find love real love that makes both of you happy or at least if anyone’s faking it it should be the other person.

Many people say you should grow old gracefully but I think that you should fight for every year. Sure the body grows old and slow and wrinkled and makes those odd popping sounds when you kneel down to see where the marble rolled under the fridge but that’s probably why God made two sizes, one that can reach the crap on the top of the fridge and one that can reach the crap on the floor, living together in peace and love and pudding and ebony and ivory and all that. What were we talking about?

Oh ,yeah! Stay young even if you have to lie about your birthday and that’s not really lying because Mom says, not my Mom, Buttercup, but Denny’s Mom, Mom, she says that age is no one’s blessed business but you, the doctor and the people that take your ugly picture for your driver’s license and even they shouldn’t care as long as you can still focus on the lights and signs and speedometer. So play and frolic and dance and joke and play board games with your pet sylph because it’ll keep you young and her happy.

You’re made up of the same stuff everything else is…stars and the Earth and trees and pudding and clouds and candy and dollies and rubber bands… God did it that way so you can always know you’re in the right place like a paper doll in a paper dollhouse everything fits instead of playing with a paper doll in a room full of scissors. You’re in the right place and you should take heart that there is a right place.

You gotta be cheerful to see the bright spots in the world and you gotta be cheerful to see through the dark spots to the bright spots on the other side.

It’s a cool place, this world, if only because some of us get hugs that are so big we can run around inside them until we’re so tired we fall down and sleep through the night in the arms of someone who loves us. It’s easy for me to see that big hug, you guys have to work harder for a poetic hug like if the entire world was trying to comfort you.

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Denise received a ‘D’ for her rapid-fire, hard to follow presentation. She then brought Pet in to meet the teacher, who gave up after five minutes and changed the grade to an A for her grasp of the character she was trying to portray.

The rest of class was spent on breathing exercises, with Pet as the star pupil.

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