Laughter
By Wislawa Szymborksa
The little girl I was –
I know her, of course.
I have a few snapshots
from her brief life.
I feel good-natured pity
for a couple of little poems.
I remember a few events.
But
to make the man who’s with me
laugh and hug me,
I dig up just one silly story:
the puppy love
of that ugly duckling.
I tell him
how she fell in love with a college boy;
that is, she wanted him
to look at her.
I tell him
how she once ran out to meet him
with a bandage on her unhurt head,
so that he’d ask, oh just ask her
what had happened.
Funny little thing.
How could she know
that even despair can work for you
if you’re lucky enough
to outlive it.
I’d give her some change: go buy a cookie.
I’d give her more: go see a show.
Go away, I’m busy now.
My discussion this week is less about the poem itself, which is yet again, for the third week in a row, written by the great Wislawa Szymborska, but more about the way the poem is phrased.
In this excerpt from “Laughter,” the speaker talks about her former childhood self, “the little girl” she was. She speaks about this being as if she never lived as her. She speaks about her as though she were her niece or granddaughter, somebody she’d send 50 dollars to, enclosed in endless birthday and Christmas cards.
The speaker goes on to describe this separate entity as she grows up and falls “in love with a college boy.” She goes further to talk about a hypothetical situation in which she’d give this girl some change to “go buy a cookie.” The speaker then shows a dislike for the separate but equal female by telling her, “Go away, I’m busy now.”
The reason I wanted to discuss this poem is because the woman feels separate from, in reality, herself. Do you, you anonymous reader out there, ever feel that way? Do you ever look in the mirror and see yourself and know it’s you, but for some reason there’s still the little part you just don’t recognize?
I think it might be that especially in the life of the college student between work and homework and classes and well, parties, some of us rarely take time to look at exactly who we are and who we’ve become. Our lives are changing by the day and sometimes our souls, not to sound too corny, just don’t have the time to catch up. It can be easy to forget about the kid, complete with a Gameboy in hand and sloppy joe running down the face, you once were. Did that kid ever think you’d become who you are now?
