Introduction
I just paid for another quarter of tuition, room, and board
for my older daughter, a college freshman at UC Santa Barbara. I find it impossible
to lay out that kind of cash without reflecting on how different her scenario
is from my college days. About 31 years ago, I was also heading into my second
quarter as a UCSB student, and realized that after paying for my tuition and
books, I was basically out of money. I’d been saving for college since I was a
kid, working all kinds of jobs (mostly in bike shops but also at a factory and a radio station) and now those savings had run out. Distraught, I wrote this little poem,
perhaps as a hint-hint to my parents.
The Poem
Starving Little
Student – January 1989
Ooh, starving little student:
Who’s toiled hard, and cries for rent. 2
“Not I,” said the Dad. “I won’t
share my
Fortune with no stupid kid. I was just
Doing fine now that I’m of you rid.” 5
Ooh, starving little student:
And who will pay his college fees?
“Not I,” said the Mom. “The entire idea 8
Is utterly absurd. I’d be laughed at
And scorned if your damn father heard!”
And who will take pity in his heart, 11
And who will feed a starving student?
“Not I,” said the government. “I would
If I could but I cannot I know; I need 14
All my cash for my missile silos.”
Ooh, former starving student:
Will no one give the kid a job? 17
“I will,” said the Shop. “For all
bikes
Created return unto me; a wrench
You will hold, a mechanic you’ll be.” 20
Footnotes &
Commentary
Title & line 1 –
Starving Little Student
My poem is a rip-off of, or (as I saw it at the time) a
tribute to, the Simon & Garfunkel song “Sparrow.” At the time, I thought the first line of that song was “Ooh, lovely little
sparrow” but I have just learned it’s “Who will love a little sparrow?” I guess
my error made this line easier; the more direct ripoff/tribute— “Who will
starve a little student?”—wouldn’t make much sense. Not that “little student” really fit either; I was 6 foot 3 and about 180 pounds and had a very
high—and thus expensive—caloric need.
Line 2 – cries for
rent
This is a little joke: the original line was “cries for
rest.” Speaking of rent, it was definitely my biggest expense: to share a
one-bedroom apartment with two other guys cost me $250 a month, and tuition
back then was only about $500 a quarter.
Line 3 – “Not I,” said
the dad
Actually, if my dad had only refused to give me money, that
wouldn’t have been so bad. But as I discovered when I applied for financial
aid, he was meanwhile declaring me as a dependent on his taxes (even though I
hadn’t lived in his household in over four years). Thus, I couldn’t get any need-based
financial aid because it was assumed I was getting support already. Nice.
Line 4 – stupid kid
I realize these are ungenerous words to put in my dad’s
mouth, and to be honest I don’t think he found me stupid. (That said, there is
a long-running family dispute about whether or not, after I’d done a 130-mile bike ride as a teenager and got caught in a thunderstorm, my father said to me, “You’re not very bright, are you.”) What frustrated my dad was my choice of major (English). He was kind of ahead of his time in promoting the incorrect notion that anybody who possibly can should study STEM.
Line 5 – now that I’m
of you rid
This clunky word order is a classic failing of my early
poetry. I grasped at some point that poets are technically allowed to put the
verb at the end of the sentence, after the object. In fact, I probably thought
this made me sound all fancy and literary. Don’t worry, I do realize now how
terrible it sounds. It was just a convenient way to get the rhyme and meter right.
I should have tried harder … for example, I could have written “I won’t let you
have a free ride—God forbid!” It’s tempting to just go back and fix it now, but
that would be cheating. Plus, I want you to give me credit for progressing as a
poet. (I know—like you care!)
Line 8 – “Not I,” said
the mom
In my mom’s defense, she had remarried, and my stepfather—whom
we called “the landlord” because that’s how she met him—was kind of a dick. She
was loathe to ask him to help me out financially and no longer had her own
income. (He was pretty loaded so she no longer needed to work.) To his credit,
he did end up supporting me to the tune of $120/month for nine months out of
the year. Not a huge amount of money, of course, but it was better than a poke
in the eye with a sharp stick, and it obviously wasn’t his duty to give me
anything.
Line 9 – scorned if
your damn father heard
It was a very bitter divorce and in fact the idea of being my sole financial supporter did inflame my mom.
It wasn’t uncommon for my brothers and me to fall into this parent-vs.-parent
chasm. My brother Geoff never did get money from our parents, and was almost
literally a starving student. He got by on meals that a friend of his would filch,
daily, from her sorority house.
Line 11 – who will
take pity in his heart
I lifted this line verbatim from the Simon & Garfunkel
song, which is laziness at best and borderline plagiarism at worst. And as you’ll
see, it makes no sense in context.
Line 13 – the government
This is easily the weakest stanza in an already unimpressive
poem. It’s not like I was trying to get food stamps or something; government
student loans would have been more appropriate to mention in the second stanza.
And since when does the government—any government—have a heart? They operate
based on policy, not feelings like pity. This is all great evidence of why I
didn’t deserve a merit-based scholarship.
Line 14 – missile silos
And here it is, ladies and gentlemen: the very worst line of
the poem. It’s a disgrace. First of all, common sense tells us it’s the
missiles themselves, and the airplanes and aircraft that launch them, that make
military spending so high. Silos can’t be a big part of that expense. Meanwhile,
the meter is all screwed up here, obviously, because “silo” is trochaic (i.e.,
the stress falls on the first syllable) rather than iambic (i.e., stress
falling on the second syllable) which is what’s needed here. Instead of lazily
settling for such weak phrasing, I should have written, “Big funding for
schools? A bad stratagem. We need all our budget for ICBMs.”
Line 16 – former starving
student
I guess the idea here was that I would have to drop out of
college. That’s a bit of exaggeration, of course. I just needed a part time
job. God, what a drama queen.
Line 17 – will no one
give the kid a job?
Factually, it really was hard for me to find a suitable job.
I managed to get a bike shop job in Montecito, but my commute was 17 miles each way by
bike, just to work a four-hour shift. For the first week I had the job, it
poured rain every day so I’d show up drenched. My boss seemed to take pity on me and simply took me off
the schedule without formally firing me. I passively declined to complain and
the job just kind of ended. I really needed a job on campus, but those were mostly reserved for kids on the Work Study program. I was not eligible for this
program because of my dad’s income level. Thanks again, Dad! I wonder how much
he saved on his taxes with that little make-believe dependent trick. Probably
like $100. (Note: I am not bitter.)
Line 18 – Shop
Why is “Shop” capitalized here and not “Government” in line
13? I guess it’s because I was trying to make “shop” a proper noun since I
couldn’t make “bike shop” fit in that line. So, so sloppy. Please—don’t judge.
I was under a lot of stress. I was broke.
Line 19 – return unto
me
Another ripped-off line from the Simon & Garfunkel song,
which of course doesn’t really fit because the job I ended up getting was at
the Associated Students Bike Shop, which didn’t sell bikes. That is to say, the
bikes were created elsewhere, so being taken to this shop for repair wasn’t a
return in any sense. I should have worked with the idea that I myself was
returning … as in, returning to my roots since this was the sixth bike shop I’d
worked at.
It was a pretty cool job, though. Because this was through
the Work Study program, the shop was required to be really flexible about my
class schedule. Like, if I had a midterm or something I was automatically given
time off. And I could be in the middle of a repair and when it was time to head
to class, I could just walk away. I was also permitted, and to some degree encouraged,
to show customers how to fix their own bikes. Why “to some degree”? Well, my
supervisor hated it when I spent more time with the good-looking coeds than
with our male customers. (This wasn’t just personal preference; for reasons of
ego many of the dudes didn’t like being shown anything.) My supervisor bawled
me out a lot for this attention imbalance but he wasn’t my manager so I just
smirked.
“But wait,” you’re thinking (if indeed you’re still reading), “I thought you couldn’t get Work Study?” Well, my manager cut me a deal. He said
the shop is supposed to pay half my hourly rate, and the University the other
half. Since I didn’t qualify for the program, I couldn’t get any money from the
University, but if I was willing to work for half the normal pay, he’d take me
on. Score!
Line 20 – a mechanic
you’ll be
What did I mean “‘a mechanic you’ll be’”? I already was a
mechanic! That’s why they were willing to hire me! It’s a good thing I didn’t
try to recycle this poem as some kind of class assignment…
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