Stand Up Straight

Stand up straight, Don't slouch, Stomach in chest out, Don't drag your feet. All phrases to make the child in you cringe, And widen the generation gap, With the child's 'but Dad' or 'oh Mum' response, As head is bowed, Eyes turned towards floor, Further slouching, With chest in and stomach out Much dragging of feet And temporary hearing loss. Yet when you reach an age when wisdom, Sometimes does kick in, You realise that Mum and Dad might have been onto something, When you have difficulty standing up straight, Keeping your chest out and your stomach in, It becomes a certainty, When your line of sight is at ground zero, And your days of predicting the weather by looking up at the clouds, long gone, With summer nights no longer spent happily gazing at the stars. Fortunately, I sort of listened to my parents, And my line of sight is a little higher for my age than most, Looking back, I think wisdom had sort of kicked in early with my parents. Even though they called me out, For not standing up straight, For not sticking my chest out, For not keeping my stomach in, For not stopping slouching, And for not lifting my feet, They sometimes symbolically pinned medals on me, Which more often than not, Caused my back to straighten, My chest to puff out, My stomach muscles to tighten, With no visible slouching or dragging of feet, All of which brought about a change in my line of sight, Until the holidays came around When, even my parents could be caught, Slouching around, As long, as their parents were not in town.