Higher Education

The fancy degree from a world famous school set in a frame that’s worth more than the paper on which it’s printed all the awards the accolades none of it has taught you the lessons I learned long ago before either of us could even read or had ever heard of Shakespeare or Marlowe Dickens or Carroll or Hemingway when we were but larvae of what we would become when you put on your first pair of patent leather shoes polished to a high shine before you toddled to the table for tea at around the same time that half a world away I slipped into my sandals the straps hanging by a thread the holes in the soles patched with duct tape before sauntering into the kitchen to spread mayonnaise or mustard or margarine onto a single slice of stale bread so I would have something in my stomach to see me through until supper which would consist of a can of some sort of beans and a ten cent box of macaroni and cheese with slices of cheap hot dogs stirred in sometimes cut into quarters when money was even more tight due to a medical bill some other unexpected expense You may be capable of convincing an audience but you can never really know You will never understand what that life is Some things they can’t teach you at Cambridge