Show and Tell, First Grade

Show and Tell, First Grade

I brought a book, Pinocchio,

“something you got for Christmas,” the teacher said;

it sat on the show-and-tell table

among the other toys, others’ gifts:

I’ve often wondered what happened to that book;

Just as I’ve often wondered about Pinocchio,

the wooden puppet who wanted so much to be a real boy,

wanted so much to be a real person,

with all that being a real person means,

that he risked it all to make a star-wish come true.

This big world calls us even when the cricket warns to beware but we want it all, for a little while at least, if only to show, to prove, that we are a person, a real person, and not a wooden puppet without any strings—no one controls us!—but we really are just wooden puppets, toys with strings we pull ourselves, for what do we really know anyhow about the world outside the toy shop where we were shaped of soft wood by a caring woodcarver, a toy maker wishing on a star who only wanted us to be real, to be a part of his life, to share himself, his dreams, but who was willing to let us go, encouraged us to go, and was willing to find us and bring us home and let us go again, more cautiously this time, but he did let us go and go we did, a little wiser, but perhaps not much;

Wishes on stars do come true, but not always like we want them to because we are only little wooden puppets brought to life by a blue fairy who let the decision be ours, to remain a wooden puppet with strings or risk it all and be a real person with all that being a real person means.

I sometimes wonder if maybe being a little wooden puppet might not have been the better choice, but like show and tell Christmas gifts, we outgrown that, too, and puppets and children’s books become only objects of wonder in years of being a real person, which may not have been so bad after all; why, even Pinocchio escaped, survived, and got his wish.