The Old Dog Barks Backwards

I hated my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Cappie. And she hated me. She told my mother at a parent-teacher conference that I was "just like the little girl with the little curl in the middle of her forehead: When she's good she's very good and when she's bad she's horrid."

Mrs. Cappie was a fan of poetry.

At some point during the year, Mrs. Cappie assigned the class to memorize and recite a poem. We were each responsible for finding our own gem to perform. I found Ogden Nash's "The Old Dog Barks Backwards":

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.

I don't remember her exact response, except that I was in trouble for picking so brief a composition. I was told to find another. So next I memorized Williams Carlos Williams' "This is Just to Say":

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving 
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

It was also too short. I must not have been the only student scouring the Loyola Elementary School library for haikus and Gertrude Stein tone poems ("pigeons on the grass alas") to cheat the system: Mrs. Cappie eventually scrapped the assignment and instead required the entire class to memorize Poe's "Eldorado," which we recited together as a unit.

I can still recite half of "Eldorado" -- not bad for a 44-year passing of time. But I rarely think of it. These days, I think a lot of Nash's lines. Our dog Halo is two months shy of 17. In her prime, she was a relentless hand licker, a shameless dinner-time beggar and a neighborhood terror from her ottoman perch by the front window. Now she sleeps almost all day and must be cajoled with praise and salty meat to eat even the smallest amount.

Still, I can remember when she was pup.