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      September 30, 2017Poor PinocchioMariah Young

      I guess if you think about it,
      Pinocchio had a troubled childhood.
      I mean, wouldn’t you feel a
      little confused if
      your best friend were a cricket,
      you were held prisoner by a greedy puppeteer,
      had your nose grow 12 ft.,
      nearly turned into a donkey,
      and swallowed by a whale
      before you were 10?
      It must have had some impact to know
      that he was a block of wood
      before a fairy turned him
      into a boy.
      As an adult,
      he probably had
      2 or 3 troubled marriages,
      a bad job as a postal worker,
      dysfunctional relationships with his kids,
      and at least one midlife crisis.
      I bet at one point or another,
      he wished that he were still a puppet,
      that his limbs, his thoughts, his life
      were still controlled by Gepetto’s strings
      I am sure he would have
      asked his fairy godmother,
      Hey! Why didn’t you tell me
      about all the stuff that people go through?!?
      or he would have called on the
      counsel of Jiminy Cricket,
      had he not accidentally
      crushed him underfoot
      one sunny afternoon when he was 12.
      Oh, Poor Pinocchio
      perhaps it is better to be a puppet
      Maybe he would finally have gone crazy,
      blowing away his boss and
      17 innocent bystanders with an AK-47
      after thinking about Jiminy Cricket,
      and browsing through a copy of Soldier of Fortune
      I would read in the paper
      of the 3 hour standoff,
      how he made a bonfire
      out of the outgoing mail,
      and began to plaster
      sets of collector stamps over the walls
      “Sort This! Deliver That!
      I’m gonna Make You All Pay!!”
      he would begin to shout before
      he would finally be shot by a sniper
      On the way to the hospital,
      he’d mumble of his fear
      that he had disappointed
      his fairy godmother.

      from Issue #9 - Summer 1998

      Mariah Young (grade 10)