A POEM - THE MORNING RECESSES

THE MORNING RECESSES
Back in the third grade
I was a menace
And my best friend Micah
Well, he was a menace too
Most of the kids were afraid of us
Because all we did was gang up
On them and make fun of them
And the little girls
They’d giggle and like us for it
Showed them we were the dominant ones
The alpha males, the leaders
So then we took to picking on them too
And at recess, while they were swinging
Me and Micah would find sticks
And run around the swing set
Banging on the metal posts
Yelling and growling
Just unleashing hell on them
But soon enough
The teacher would hear about it
And we’d get another demerit
Or a long lecture
But that just made us even badder
And gave us bigger reputations
To live up to
And the big kids liked us more
So there we’d be again,
Picking up sticks and threatening kids,
Banging our clubs on the swing set
Or the slide, or the monkey bars.
We never thought much about things
Back in those days.
You don’t think much when you’re young.
You just have these impulses
And you act on them.
But I never had the impulse to grow up,
Somehow that just happened along the way.
Maybe between recesses.