About dragons
or the wisdom of moms
When our son was born, along with the congratulations and best wishes of friends and family, we got a word of unsolicited advice from my mom who said that though small and seemingly helpless, babies are in fact very intelligent;
just when you’re about to throw them out, they sleep through the night.
Mom was right. From Day One our son was a good eater and woke up pretty much every hour during the night to feed. As my wife was breastfeeding, determined it be his only food for the first six months, this meant she was also up on the hour to plug the little guy in.
While baby was thriving, once the post-birth adrenalin rush wore off my wife was about out for the count, victim of the kind of sleep-deprivation that would not be condoned by the Geneva Conventions.
Not a pretty sight.
Then one glorious night it happened: our son slept from 10pm to 8am without a peep. From then on he generally woke up calling for food just once an evening, which allowed my wife to return to the normal maternal state of mere chronic fatigue.
A few years later Mom was right again. I was working for the government and got into a running dispute with a colleague about the meaning of the song Puff the Magic Dragon. Seems there’s a strain of conventional wisdom that insists, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the song is about smoking marijuana.
Puff. Get it?
I’d heard this argument off and on for years, mainly, I must say, from people who either didn’t smoke and/or gave too much credence to the practice of looking beyond the words to find literary meaning.
Without belittling anyone’s intelligence, I’ve always wondered about the search for inner meaning at the expense of the evidence. According to the words Puff and his friend, Jackie Paper, embark on myriad adventures to exotic lands where they are feted by royalty and subdue pirates with nothing more than Puff’s mighty roar. Theirs are marvels that would never end except for one thing: childhood is fleeting. Jackie Paper grows up.
Hey, it’s in the words:
​
​
​
I got confirmation of this straight from the dragon’s mouth at a demonstration, years back, in Rocky Flats, Colorado, outside of Denver. It was a day-long event protesting the existence there of an armament plant making plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs. Antinuclear activists, concerned citizens and
a good handful of politicians were out in force making speeches and passing out pamphlets denouncing the US government’s policies that promoted such an industry.
There was also food, dancing, chanting and performances by musicians supporting the cause.
One of these was Peter Yarrow, the guy who wrote Puff. At
the end of his set, Yarrow called time to say he categorically disagreed with those who insisted the song was code for blowing dope.
It was, he said, about the sad but inevitable loss of innocence that comes with growing up. That’s all it was or ever was.
I tried reasoning with my colleague but it was like trying to reason with your kid – 95% wasted breath, minimum. My colleague just laughed and stuck to her guns. The song’s about pot. Everyone knows that. It’s so obvious.
Back to Mom ...
I’m on the phone with her a couple of days later and recount the incident. She listens to both sides of the argument and says that the important thing about Puff the Magic Dragon is that it’s about dragons.
Put that way, who could disagree?
Listen ...
Dragons live forever, but not so little boys/
Painted wings and giants’ rings make way for other toys