Letters to the Editor
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What can this song mean?
As a pre-teen, I was introspective and shy. I loved books, music, film. One day, I left a movie singing a song I'd heard--"it's a cold, cruel world, and I'm off to see the circus, gonna be a broken-hearted clown." Suddenly, I actually heard the lyrics I was singing and I immediately stopped walking. I was baffled. What could that person mean to sing that the world was cold and cruel? There was nothing cold or cruel about the world I lived in. Why would anyone write a song like that?
I treasure that memory. Wasn't I lucky to feel perplexed about those lyrics? No doubt, there are plenty children today who would understand those words instantly. But in the late 50s, living in a suburb, those words were nonsense. Innocense was my point of view.
Years later in college, upon reading Hobbes' description of life as nasty, brutish, and short, I could only nod tiredly in agreement and underline it, writing "Yes!" in the margin.
If her kids are that well-raised and lead lives of "meaning and purpose," then she can't be doing too badly.