Shoe-off Shelly

Artwork provided by my own beautiful Ethnie! Thank you!

There once was a girl who liked to roam

With one shoe off and one shoe on,

Never was the day she would wear two together,

And never her bare feet, complete.

She liked one shoe on and that was all,

Her name was Shelly Oddshouner,

Her right shoe kept on, the left shoe gone missing,

“Shelly one-shoe,” her mother would greet.

Shelly lived her whole life in one shoe,

She even went to school that way,

Her left shoulder was short, her right seemed to be taller,

She got crooked-er by the week.

In kindergarten they called her cracked,

Like an egg out on the pavement,

In her first grade year the teacher said she was “feckless,”

And entirely blamed her mommy.

In second they said she was silly,

And the kids would just laugh and laugh,

In third grade she was titled “a th-trange little girl,”

A boy lisped and others agreed.

In fourth they found her to be “foolish,”

But she could care less what they said,

In fifth grade they stopped talking and thought about Shelly. . .

Was one shoe a matter so weighty?

In sixth grade she was exceptional,

In seventh she was singular,

In eighth grade they thought she was highly eccentric,

In ninth grade, “novel,” was she.

In tenth they saw Shelly as distinct,

She had a fairly large fan group,

In her eleventh year she was “extraordinary,”

Member in at least a dozen rings.

In twelfth she was at top of her class.

In college she was “radical,”

 She fought a world filled with serious injustice,

She graduated with esteem.

but then she just was,

she was a girl

who liked one shoed,

and liked one bared,

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