I was going to post Phaye’s mini-biography of Tom today, but what she gave me was peculiar and confusing, and not in a good way. I asked for a re-write.
Phaye said that she “gone flippy” because she had re-thought the lyrics of the Peter, Paul, and Mary song “Puff the Magic Dragon” and realized that she had misunderstood the story. These lyrics were the heart of her distress:
A dragon lives forever
But not so little boys
….
One gray night it happened
Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon
He ceased his fearless roar
Phaye had always thought that Jackie Paper grew up, became interested in other things, and stopped visiting Puff. But only an idiot would abandon a dragon as a playmate, so Jackie did not, in fact, grow up and move on, but had instead died. I challenged her assumption that Jackie must have died. While abandoning a dragon as a playmate seemed stupid there was no reason it couldn’t be done. Maybe Jackie was stupid.
Well, she countered, dragons are immortal and therefore must have deep knowledge and keen perspective. Puff would understand a child growing up, but he could not cope with a soulless universe in which a child died. That was why Puff was so depressed--he wasn’t lonely, he was grief-stricken. I couldn’t think of a useful response.
This is a woman who last year got a degree in philosophy and will soon move on to get her Master’s and she’s upset about possibly misunderstanding a children’s song. I may have my answer to why she said she’s never had a steady boyfriend.
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