You read for fun?!
Measuring out life in coffee spoons…
That’s my present screen name on MSN messenger. You will not BELIEVE the questions I have got about this screen name!
(For those of you who don’t know, it is a line from a poem called ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by TS Eliot. The context in which the line is in – I don’t know about the rest of you but – I loved it! It just wakes your mind up! It’s one of lines that make you go hmmm…)
But apparently, not everyone thinks so...
- What’s with the screen name?!
It’s a line from a poem.
- From your English textbook?
No...just a poem I read.
- You mean you read poems for fun?
Erm...yea
It’s hilarious how out of touch people can be. But I guess reading and writing are things I consider fun, and other people have their respective things. But still, how out of it can you be?! Even our NAFL day this year has a glimpse of such a train of thought: This one girl plays this bimbo-only-loves-to-shop type ostrich (everyone plays an animal...the whole thing is set in a jungle!).
Everyone is talking about Charles Darwin. And someone asks, “Who’s he?!”
The ‘head of the jungle’ answers “He wrote ‘Roots’...I think”
To this, the bimbo-ostrich says “No no! That was Charles Dickens!”
It’s quite funny, in a silly kind of a way. Of course, we are assuming that the audience knows who Alex Haley is.
I have kind of started using lines of nice poems as my screen names, but I have found like 2 people who understand them...
The next one I was considering is:
“True wit is nature to advantage dressed,What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed”
I don’t know what kind of reactions I am going to get! Someone asked me who said it, and when I said Alexander Pope, she wanted to know whether the Pope’s name really was Alexander!
- You read for fun?!
Uh, yea! Doesn't everyone?!
That’s my present screen name on MSN messenger. You will not BELIEVE the questions I have got about this screen name!
(For those of you who don’t know, it is a line from a poem called ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by TS Eliot. The context in which the line is in – I don’t know about the rest of you but – I loved it! It just wakes your mind up! It’s one of lines that make you go hmmm…)
But apparently, not everyone thinks so...
- What’s with the screen name?!
It’s a line from a poem.
- From your English textbook?
No...just a poem I read.
- You mean you read poems for fun?
Erm...yea
It’s hilarious how out of touch people can be. But I guess reading and writing are things I consider fun, and other people have their respective things. But still, how out of it can you be?! Even our NAFL day this year has a glimpse of such a train of thought: This one girl plays this bimbo-only-loves-to-shop type ostrich (everyone plays an animal...the whole thing is set in a jungle!).
Everyone is talking about Charles Darwin. And someone asks, “Who’s he?!”
The ‘head of the jungle’ answers “He wrote ‘Roots’...I think”
To this, the bimbo-ostrich says “No no! That was Charles Dickens!”
It’s quite funny, in a silly kind of a way. Of course, we are assuming that the audience knows who Alex Haley is.
I have kind of started using lines of nice poems as my screen names, but I have found like 2 people who understand them...
The next one I was considering is:
“True wit is nature to advantage dressed,What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed”
I don’t know what kind of reactions I am going to get! Someone asked me who said it, and when I said Alexander Pope, she wanted to know whether the Pope’s name really was Alexander!
- You read for fun?!
Uh, yea! Doesn't everyone?!
posted by 
@ 9:22 pm
2 Comments:
At 2:12 am, January 12, 2005,
D. said…
I still like 'When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table' better. Perhaps because I live in a house o' doctors.
I'm usually in the same situation re. liking books and poetry and daring to show it.
Person A: 'You like poetry?'
Me: 'Yes.'
Person A: 'Really?'
Me: 'I am twice a fool, then, and verily I know it; I am a fool to love to read, and another one to show it.'**
Person A: *retires, worsted*
You ought to try that some time.
(What is the Pope's name, anyway?)
Anyhow, I'm converting my friends to reading poems for fun - our English text has some real gems in it (remember I told you about 'Listeners'?) Sadly, we don't learn the nifty ones.
** - I actually said this to someone. I don't know how I managed to make it up on the spur of the moment. Whee.
At 2:40 am, May 29, 2012,
Akshay said…
So true!
Always happens!
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