Dear Mr. President

Does fighting to have 'the most' ~ make us safer or happier?

Illustration by Terri Asher

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Early in my career as a song writer for kids and families, I met a brilliant musician named Bob Blue. He wrote songs from a kid’s perspective, and like me, he was committed to helping children and families figure out how to navigate childhood and parenthood in this funny old world of ours.  He lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, and I’m from Topanga, California, so we didn’t see as much of each other as we would have liked, but that was fine. We became friends. I recorded his song “Dear Mr. President” on my “Stayin’ Over” album.

Growing up in Connecticut in the ‘50’s, I watched our neighbors buy and build ‘home bomb shelters’, with the idea that their family could survive a nuclear attack when and if it came. Of course, those shelters would have been totally inadequate had there been a nuclear war. No bomb shelter would really be able to help a family survive a full-out nuclear attack. But the ‘conflict’ between countries about who has the most nuclear armaments continues today. Bob wrote this song in 1984, and we still have not eliminated our stock piles of nuclear weapons because we fear that other countries will not get rid of theirs, and we will be at a disadvantage.

Our next Presidential election is coming up soon, so let’s listen to “Dear Mr. President”. It’s a great song that sheds light on why violence doesn’t solve problems in the long run. The future may provide me with an opportunity to re-write Bob’s song and create an entirely new letter to the President with my concerns about their leadership.  Think I’ll have to change the title to, … “Dear Ms. President”?  We’ll see! 

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DEAR MR. PRESIDENT
									                             A-Em9/A
Dear Mr. President, I am in second grade.	                      D-G
My teacher thought that I should write this down for you. A-A7-D
I don’t know why he thinks that you’d be interested.	       D-G
You have so many things to do.					               A-A7-D

Last week at show and tell, I shared my sticker book,	       G-D
And Michael Ergo said that he had one like mine.		A-A7-D
I said I had about two hundred stickers now. 			        G-D
He said he had five hundred nine.				     E-E7-A7sus4-A7

I got home after school, picked up my piggy bank,
Emptied it out, and then I laughed and put it down.
I went to “Favorite Things.”  It’s like a sticker store.
Maybe they have one in your town.

I got more stickers than I prob’ly should have got.
I brought ‘em home and then I stuck ‘em in my book.
It took me very long, like maybe half a day.
Well, I’m not sure how long it took.

I brought ‘em all to school, and Michael laughed at me.
He said at home he had a whole lot more than me.
He said his father owns a sticker factory,
And brought him home ten thousand three!

Called him a “dirty liar!” He called me something else,
Something my parents said a person shouldn’t say.
I told him “Cut it out!” He said “You make me stop!”
I hate when people talk that way.

Then I hit Michael’s arm. I know I shouldn’t hit,
But I was angry as an eight-year-old can be.
He hit me back of course. Soon we were fighting hard.
Me hitting him, him hitting me.

My mouth was full of blood. His nose was bleeding too.
We had to talk about it ‘stead of having gym.
We should have gone to gym. The talk was really dumb,
Him blaming me, me blaming him.

I got home mad that day, threw out my sticker book.
I don’t know why I like those stickers anyway.
You just keep buying them to say you have the most.
That’s such a boring thing to say.

I save my money now. Soon I’ll buy better stuff,
Stuff that is useful, like a bicycle or sled.
And Michael’s friends with me. Showed me his sticker book,
Not quite as many as he said.

I cannot figure out why I am writing this.
Maybe my teacher thinks that you have stickers too.
Well, if you really do, why don’t you throw them out?
Sincerely, your friend, Tommy Drew.

Written by Bob Blue, ©1984, Bob Blue
On Stayin’ Over  -  www.peteralsop.com 


Some people say that a song about the President of the United States is inherently a political song, … and why in the world would we want to play a political song for children!?  Well, I would respond, “What exactly do you mean when you say ‘political’?” Because politics is defined as: “the activities associated with the governance of a country, or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.”

There’s that word ‘power’. Just about everything we do with our time here on our planet, involves some form making a risk-analysis before we make a decision. We analyze all the data we have, and then we decide how to proceed. Seems like every decision we make, could actually be considered to be a political decision, especially for kids!

Even though they aren’t necessarily concerned with the governance of a ‘country’, they ARE concerned with who has the ‘power’ in the sphere of their childhood. They don’t get to vote on it, but they are very aware of power inequities in their relationships at school and of course, with their immediate family. Kids constantly have to assess who has the ‘power’, and figure out how they can get what they want from that person. Usually it’s Mom or Dad, but sometimes it’s Gramma or the Principal, or the Lady in the cafeteria, or maybe even the Custodian, or the school bully.

In our song, Tommy Drew brags a bit as he tells us his story; he’s jealous, there’s competition, fighting, hitting and violence to defend himself, because that’s what we do when we feel attacked. We fight! And then, he becomes friends with his ‘enemy’ afterwards. These kinds of stories are really important because it’s the ‘stories’ we carry around in our heads and our hearts that dictate how we behave.  That’s where the real power lives.

In today’s world, most of us have been brought up and exposed to thinking in a predominantly male-binary culture. We see life as full of binary opposites; friend or foe, good or bad, fight or flight, yours or mine! You get the idea. When we live in such a society, our old stories limit us in ways that prevent us from ‘seeing our lives with a new set of glasses’. When we can actually do that, … view things from a different perspective, … maybe someone else’s perspective, then we can change our stories. I’m told that’s called ‘thinking out of the box’.

Many of us have experienced what it’s like, … feeling as though we live ‘in a box’. Inevitably we run into ‘roadblocks’ from time to time, living in a ‘box’, … and then we stop and say “Houston, … we’ve ‘got a problem’!” By simply using that word problem, we set ourselves on a path that limits our ability to successfully change and grow and press ahead. Because inherent in that label problem, is the lived experience that some problems can be solved, and some problem can’t. When we’ve tried as hard as we can to find a solution, … and it seems like we have no more choices, … it can feel like a verdict, … a definite dead-end. That’s what happens when we limit ourselves to picking one side of what we see as a ‘binary choice’, eh?

So what I discovered that always helps me proceed when I feel stuck, … is that as soon as I realize that I’m seeing one of my ‘roadblocks’ as a problem, … I reframe it! I call it a puzzle, … and just the act of doing that, lifts my spirits and gives me great hope! Because my ‘story’ has changed, … now it’s about a puzzle, and I know that puzzles can be solved! We just have to find the missing piece and figure out where it goes, … then we can move on with our lives. That’s what Tommy Drew did. Seemed to work for him.

I’m hoping our next President can reframe some of our national thinking and get some of our old stories changed so we can move on with our lives too, … don’t you?

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