Write It Down

In response to Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye--written for my poetry class

Have you ever thought of Benjamin Franklin as a kid? Maybe he went by Benny then. What did Benny’s 2nd grade teacher think the first time she saw his name, no longer Benny, in the news paper? What would she say now if she could see his legacy?

Have you ever thought about Karl Marx having sex? About the father of modern day communism having a girlfriend? What did she think of him? Was she surprised by his ideas or did she just think of him as the nut job who kept her warm at night?

How about Shakespeare’s next door neighbor or Amelia Earhart’s childhood friend? Did Malcom X have a stock broker? Was he black? Who was Lewis Carroll’s drug dealer—assuming he did just write about bad trips and didn’t just actually have an imagination? Did Margret Thatcher’s mom know who she was raising?

We don’t think about famous people having a life. Actually that’s not true. Apparently the only people we care more about in our lives than ourselves are the people who grace the silver screen. Stop the presses The Beibs just winked, killing an old woman with a heart condition. We are fascinated by the day to day lives of these celebrities, what they’re wearing or more accurately, “who” they are wearing, when they cut their hair, do they like Starbucks or Peets, what shampoo do they use, who walks their dog? Seemingly mundane parts of regular people’s lives are blown out of proportion as the paparazzi try to capture Orlando Bloom tying his shoes.

But Hollywood aside, who cares about famous people’s day to day activities? Who cares who the barber of Hitler was—even if he was responsible for the stache he made infamous? We want to know what they are famous for and move on. Let’s not dwell, people. Newton discovered gravity after an incident with an apple. That’s all you need to know. We are being rushed through the spark-notes version of these people’s lives.

I find one problem with all this—you forget that these people are just that: people. They aren’t gods; they are humans. And they had lives outside of making history.

The poem, Famous, I guess only broadly relates to this and its connection can be found in the last part about being famous because “it never forgot what it could do”. Okay, great, the overall message is: be known for your ability and excel in whatever you are good at—and don’t worry if it’s significant or not because it’s great whatever you do.

I don’t like it. I mean, it’s all touchy-feely accept yourself crap and I can respect that. I just don’t think it’s the right thing for me. I can’t just be an accountant, famous only to my clients, because I just happen to be a really good accountant. For the record, I would be a horrible accountant, purely based on my mathematical inabilities. But that aside, the principle of be good at something no matter its importance just doesn’t fly with me.

I want to be famous to the world. I want to be the woman heard round the world… or something. I want, years from now my name to be read by kids in school; I want them to resent me and respect me because the question on the midterm they didn’t know was all about me.

I want people to remember me fondly. Not just my kids or the people who knew me. I want people to say, I never met her, but I know her. I know what she stood for and she stood for greatness. So write it down. I want to be famous.