A poetry by Billy Collins
《To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl》
Do you realize that if you had started building
the Parthenon on the day you were born,
you would be all done in only one more year？
Of course, you couldn’t have done that all alone.
So never mind; you’re fine just being yourself.
You’re loved for just being you.
But did you know that at your age Judy Garland
was pulling down 150,000 dollars a picture,
Joan of Arc was leading the French army to
victory and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room
──no wait, I mean he had invented the calculator？
Of course, there will be time for all that later in
your life, after you come out of your room and
begin to blossom, or at least pick up all your socks.
For some reason I keep remembering that
Lady Jane Grey was queen of England when she
was only 15. But then she was beheaded,
so never mind her as a role model.
A few centuries later, when he was your age,
Franz Schubert was doing the dishes for his family,
but that did not keep him from composing two
symphonies, four operas and two complete masses
as a youngster. But of course, that was in Austria
at the height of Romantic lyricism, not here in the
suburbs of Cleveland. Frankly, who cares if
Annie Oakley was a crack shot at 15 or if
Maria Callas debuted as Tosca at 17？
We think you’re special just being you──
playing with your food and staring into space.
By the way, I lied about Schubert doing the dishes,
but that doesn’t mean he never helped out around
the house.
Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.
( Erma Bombeck )
Do you know what you call those who use towels
and never wash them, eat meals and never do the
dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are
entertained till they drop？
If you have just answered, ‘A house guest,’
you’re wrong because I have just described my kids.
( Erma Bombeck )
I take a very practical view of raising children.
I put a sign in each of their rooms:
‘Checkout Time is 18 years.’
( Erma Bombeck )