The Itsy Bitsy Spider
I’m sure you heard the nursery rhyme as a child
The nursery rhyme about the spider
Crawling its way up the water spout
Crawling
Crawling
Crawling
Until the rain comes and washes it back down.
But when the sun comes out
It gets up and tries again
Every time.
It’s so sweet, right?
Just a classic little tale of someone who never gives up
No matter how many times life kicks them in the ass
A lesson to us all.
What obviously isn’t in the nursery rhyme for children
Is that some spiders —
A lot of spiders —
Can’t swim
The spider in the nursery rhyme would have probably died
The first time the rain came down the spout.
So, let’s rewrite the nursery rhyme, shall we?
The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout
Down came the rain, and washed the spider out
Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain
But the itsy bitsy spider could not crawl up the spout again.
Oh, but that’s sad, right?
That’s depressing
Why would you tell children that?
Why would you tell children that the spider wouldn’t get back up again?
Why would you leave that message on your five year old?
Why should your five year old know that they may experience things in life
That make it feel impossible to keep going forward?
Why should they know that they might not be able
To bounce back every time?
Why should they know that they could drown?
They don’t need to know that yet.
They don’t need to know that their life won’t necessarily
Be rainbows and unicorns and butterflies yet
They don’t need to know that this world fucking sucks yet
They don’t need to know that the other kids
That they are sharing their toys with
Sharing their lunches with
Sharing their earliest memories with
Might not all make it to adulthood yet.
Because that’s too much for a child to understand
That was too much for us to understand as children
So we lived
We learned
And we eventually comprehended it
Only for some of us to learn to swim
Some of us to barely learn to doggy paddle
And some of us to drown.
Just like the spider would.
I feel like I’m drowning
Just like the spider would
I might not be dead
But I’m struggling to breathe
To be like a spider that can swim
And keep crawling up the water spout.
I never thought life would be easy
I was introduced to struggle at a very young age
So I never had the blissful ignorance to the real world that most kids
Get to have
(At least, not completely)
(There were a few things I didn’t know)
But I didn’t think that it would be damn near impossible for me
To keep crawling up the water spout
Of course I know I need to keep going
In spite of all the challenges life throws at me
But that doesn’t change the fact that the more life kicks my ass
The more I just want to let myself drown.
Like the itsy bitsy spider would.
