I am somebody
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 by Dawn SummersI love Emily Dickinson so very much. I went to find this poem and ended up spending an hour reading about thirty other poems. I almost switched this poem, but instead you may just get weeks and weeks of Emily Dickinson. You’re welcome.
Anyway, the poem. I memorized this poem when I was 10. It was part of some public speaking exercise or another and this selection just spoke to me. I was never a popular kid. I was lucky though, because I was in gifted classes, so being “smart” was perfectly acceptable; and, I was tough, so I didn’t get picked on but that first time by whichever kid evidently didn’t know better. However, I wasn’t particularly pretty (my permanent teeth were WAY too big for my face for a LONG time), I wasn’t friendly or athletic or talkative, so my classmates left me much to myself and I was never a teacher favorite either.
Wow, writing all that in one place, makes it sound so much worse than it was. I was perfectly content with this state of affairs. I was happy enough at home and in church. School was just a place I had to go in between those safe havens. *Loner shrug*
So it shouldn’t come as much a surprise that of the poems and speech excerpts presented to me in the fifth grade, I chose this one. I loved that it not only celebrated anonymity, but mocked popularity as something so mundane and ordinary that a frog accomplishes it simply with its constant bloviating. I didn’t need to be called up to the blackboard to be the teacher’s assistant or accompany the cool girls to the bathroom where they measured whose bust was bigger. How dreary. I was content just sitting quietly in the back of the cafeteria, playing world domination with Michael’s GI Joes and writing stories about children accidentally launched into space.
I was not one to prattle on with nonsense to get people to notice me. I read big books and thought big thoughts, that was quite enough.
When I chose the poem for this week, I thought my writeup was going to be about how I am still nobody, but the more I thought about it and read some internet analyses about it, I realized that I’m much more a frog now. I tell my name all the livelong day! Sorta. I like my semi-public life, but it mostly plays itself out from the safety of my keyboard. I am still very painfully shy and retiring around strangers…so maybe I’m like half nobody and half somebody.
Yeah, that works. I’m a nosome.
Though “Are you nosome too?” just might be the worst question ever crafted in the history of crafting questions.
im-nobody* by Emily Dickinson
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
*This was the poem as I learned it…um…19 years ago. However, I found this other version on the internets. I find it curious and displeasing.
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d advertise — you know!
How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one’s name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!