I Have This Idiot Name Tag Which

It Is A Blessing To Get Old. It Is A Blessing To Find The Time To Do The Things, To Read The Books, To Listen To The Music. I Have Nothing Now But Praise For My Life.

I Was A Very Sickly Child. My Parents Were Immigrants. They Were Not Decorous. They Were Not Discreet. They Always Thought I Was Gonna Die.

For My Father The One Calamity Was That My Brother And Sister And I Never Learned To Swim. My Father, Who Was Very Macho, Was A Strong Swimmer And Was Terribly Disappointed To Have Children Who Didn't Swim. Once When My Mother Was Sitting In A Beach Chair - I Can Still See The Big Umbrella - She Called To My Father, "throw Them In! Throw Them In! They'll Swim!" So He Did. Then He Looked Down, And There Were The Three Sendak Children Lying Perfectly Still Underwater, Not Fighting For Life!

Grown-ups Desperately Need To Feel Safe, And Then They Project Onto The Kids. But What None Of Us Seem To Realize Is How Smart Kids Are. They Don’t Like What We Write For Them, What We Dish Up For Them, Because It’s Vapid, So They’ll Go For The Hard Words, They’ll Go For The Hard Concepts, They’ll Go For The Stuff Where They Can Learn Something. Not Didactic Things, But Passionate Things.

Oh, I Adored Mickey Mouse When I Was A Child. He Was The Emblem Of Happiness And Funniness. You Went To The Movies Then, You Saw Two Movies And A Short. When Mickey Mouse Came On The Screen And There Was His Big Head, My Sister Said She Had To Hold Onto Me. I Went Berserk.