It's a School day? Oh, no. I'm sick!

If you treat a sick child like an adult and a sick adult like a child, everything usually works out pretty well. – Ruth Carlisle

We all have had days where we have just not wanted to get up in the morning. I however seem to have quite a few of these days where I would have given anything to stay in bed. Sure school is a time to meet with one’s friends; to talk about what happened last night on your favorite television show; to build new relationships; and to learn of course. But there are so many days where I will wake up in the morning and just know that it is better for me to stay in bed or other days when I just feel like my time would be better spent outside than in a brick building. Well, continuing on in my ode to Shel Silverstein I could not pass up the opportunity to blog about one of the silliest poems about attempts to not go to school, “Sick.” Let’s face it we all have done it claimed to be deathly ill when in reality we just wanted a break from learning and a day to relax and watch TV. Well in “Sick,” little Peggy Ann McKay gives a list of excuses as to why she just cannot go to school today, all of them dealing with her being supposedly ill. If you read the poem close enough though, you realize that as her excuses go on they start to have nothing to do with being ill but are actually just how some parts of the body function; such as, her belly button caving in and her elbow being bent. In the end after listing a ton of reasons not to go to school, someone tells little Peggy Ann McKay that it was actually Saturday! All the attempts to get out of school and she actually did not even have school that day. So little Peggy responds to the news that it is actually Saturday by telling the person, who she had just complained about all these illnesses to, that she was going out to play. Shel Silverstein really out did himself again in this poem with his ability to tell a story so smoothly while still being self-conscience about keeping up with his rhyme scheme. This poem just makes you have to giggle about all the effort little Peggy put into not having to go to school. It’s something to think about next time you want to be ‘sick’ and skip school.