Too Many Daves

Posted by DJL on Mar 1, 2014 in Poetry | 4 comments

Tomorrow is the birthday of one of my all-time favorite writers, Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. I’ll be posting more about dear Theodor on Monday, but for now I wanted to share one of his poem-stories that appeared as part of his wonderful book The Sneetches and Other Stories. This book, for reasons I’ll share in more detail on Monday, was always one of my favorites. And this poem, for obvious reasons, made me laugh as a kid…and again when I read it to my kids…and yet again when I came upon it this morning.

Too Many Daves

Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave?
Well, she did. And that wasn’t a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants one and calls out, “Yoo-Hoo!
Come into the house, Dave!” she doesn’t get one.
All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run!
This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves’
As you can imagine, with so many Daves.
And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn
And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim.
And one of them Shadrack. And one of them Blinkey.
And one of them Stuffy. And one of them Stinkey.
Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Ziggy. And one Soggy Muff.
One Buffalo Bill. And one Biffalo Buff.
And one of them Sneepy. And one Weepy Weed.
And one Paris Garters. And one Harris Tweed.
And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate …
But she didn’t do it. And now it’s too late.

Dr. Seuss, from The Sneetches and Other Stories (1961).