I recently came across something on the Internet and thought it an interesting idea. It can be found in various forms, not many different from the others though. I’m sorry to say it comes with no mention of its original author. It is often seen without a title. I have given it one and have rewritten it.
I’ve changed the order of things. I’ve changed the wording, I’ve added a lot and taken away a little. It is my version and from what I’ve seen, I think it’s the best.
I share it here.
Hear these words, hear the rhyme
Heed the hope within my mind
Send me back to where I’ll find
What I wish in place and time
~~~~
Dear Rick,
In your time it’s December 13, 1971. I know it’s hard to believe and will come as a great surprise but I’m you! Yep you, but exactly 40 years in your future.
I’ll help you here. Remember that ghostly woman who would repeatedly terrorize you in nightmares as a five-year old? We never knew her intentions, but we knew she was evil. Then there’s that dream of a lakeside home and a boat parked in the back. The huge antenna atop that sprawling ranch style home. How about that last kiss and the words Dani said to you just five nights ago when you last saw her? All those doubts and the terrible, nagging, lingering ache in your heart? Who else but you could know these things? Young love is always tough. Give it time, your feelings will pass as they will for the others that will surely come. Heart breakers, every one of them! Prepare yourself… adult love can be even worse. (more…)
Like many women my age, I am 28 years old. ~~ Mary Schmich
Mary Schmich is a lot smarter than me. She was born in Savannah, Georgia and went to high school in Phoenix, Arizona. She would go on to get her B.A.
from California’s Pomona College. Then, after three years working in college admissions, and more than a year in France, she attended journalism school at Stanford. She worked as a newspaper reporter afterwards and in 1985 went to the Chicago Tribune. Later she became their national correspondent in Atlanta.
In 1992 she started writing a column for the Tribune but after a year took time off to attend Harvard on a Nieman Fellowship for journalists. Like I said, Mary’s a lot smarter than me. From 1985 until January of this year she authored a comic strip Brenda Starr. She’s also a ragtime piano player. Multi-talented I’d say.
Schmich who is still writing her columns for the Tribune wrote her most famous in 1997. She started with a simple admonition and continued with advice for living without regret. In time that advice would be spread around the Internet and, as often happens, has been falsely identified as a commencement address given at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by author Kurt Vonnegut. The author was once quoted by the New York Times as saying, I would have been proud had the words been mine.
Stories I Share With Friends 