Boys are Awful

Boys are Awful

Annabelle Lucy is my very best friend
She lives at the end of the street.
We meet on the way to school each day
And after it’s over, we meet.
Then we ask our mothers for an afternoon snack,
I walk her home and she walks me back,
Or we ride our bicycles round the block
But most of the time WE TALK.
And what do we talk about?
EVERYTHING.
Annabelle Lucy’s real gold ring,
Secrets we have that nobody guesses,
People and parents and party dresses,
Annabelle’s cousins poodle pup,
The things we’ll do when we’re both grown up,
What games we’ll play when the weather turns hot
And Annabelle talks about boys A LOT.
“my!” says Annabelle,
“Aren’t boys awful!
I’d hate to be a boy.
I would rather be a waffle
I’d rather be a toadstool,
I’d sooner be a squirrel,
(If I had to be anything except a girl),
Or an ant from a whole big hill full of ants
Than an awful old boy in corduroy pants!
“boys!” says Annabelle, giving a giggle.
“they can’t stand still
They can only wiggle.
When they meet the friend they are fondest of,
They push him off the pavement
With an elbow shove;
Whey wrestle on the ground till they almost smother,
For that’s how they know they like each other.
They pull peoples arms half out of their sockets
And they think dead mice are to carry in pockets.
“Boys are different as they can be, “
Says Annabelle Lucy, “from you and me.”
Their ears are enormouser,
Their shoes smell fishier,
The mud they fall in is always squishier.
When they see sad movies, sitting in a crowd,
The never cry,
They laugh out loud.
If you’re playing princess
In gold-paper crowns,
They won’t be courtiers,
They want to be clowns.
They want to be commandos with secret whistles
Or painted Indians or guided missiles.
They treat every day like an April fool
And they step on your feet
At dancing school.
Annabelle isn’t afraid of boys.
If one of them ever shows up,
Or happens to pass us after class,
Annabelle turns her nose up
And walks right past them, tossing her curls,
Whispering “aren’t you glad we’re girls?”
For “girls,” says Annabelle, “are smarter than boys.”
When girls are noisy, it’s a nicer noise.
They comb their hair and they tie their laces
But boys only wash the middle of their faces.
In fact, what they hate the most is soap.
They don’t like dolls,
And they won’t jump rope.
They’d never change clothes if they had their choices
And they run downstairs
At the top of their voices.
“Do you know a boy named Tommy Tripp?
He sits behind me in penmanship
And he’s so awful, it’s hard to believe.
“like, just for instance, he’ll joggle my sleeve
When I’m making Q’s
With those funny squiggles.
Then he’ll laugh and laugh
Till my whole desk jiggles
Or else he’ll jerk on my ponytail.
Once he handed me –UGH!
A snail, all crawly and slimy.
I didn’t speak to that horrible boy one time that week.
Some of the girls in the other class say
That Tommy’s handsome in a sort of way.
He can walk on his hands
He doesn’t scare
They LIKE that carroty colored hair
And he’s very good at arithmetic.
But ooh, that Tommy! He makes me sick!
For honestly, near as I can tell,
He’s bad as the rest,”
Says Annabelle.
Now Annabelle Lucy is my very best friend
But I cannot pretend to know
If she always means what I think she means
Or the other way around is so.
But I can figure the answer soon
For listen what happened this afternoon.
It was over at my house.
We’d eaten our snacks
And Annabelle and I were playing Jacks.
I was doing my Eights with a knuckle-knock,
When a boy came wandering up our walk.
His ears were enormous
His sneakers smelt fishy
He’d stepped in the mud where the mud was squishy.
His hair was red, the carroty kind
But Annabelle didn’t seem to mind.
When exactly as though in front of a grandstand
He turned a somersault, he did a handstand,
Then chewed on a grass stem, green and juicy,
“Hi there, Tommy” Said Annabelle Lucy.
“Hi!” said the boy, as bold as brass.
“How you getting on in division class?
Since I haven’t got anything else to do
Maybe I could help with a problem or two.”
(he was swinging his arms like a metronome.)
“if you’re going my way I’ll walk you home.”
And can you imagine? What do you think?
Annabelle didn’t shudder or shrink,
Or turn up her nose, or glare, or frown,
But put her ball and jackstones down
And giving a sort of a happy skip,
Away she sauntered with Tommy Tripp!
When I told my mother just now about it,
She smiled and said that she didn’t doubt it.
She says there are times
When it’s perfectly lawful
For girls to consider that boys are awful,
Until quite suddenly, you look twice
And notice that “awful” seems rather nice
“and any minute,” she told me, “…well
You’ll notice it, too, like Annabelle!”
How odd! I wouldn’t believe it ----
Quite------
Except that my mother,
Is generally right.