Good Fun

I am desperate for some humor, how about you? This was on Writers Almanac. I am not familiar with Ron Padgett but this poem reminds me of Billy Collins, one of my favorites. I love his line "it is interesting not to know something everyone else knows." Makes me feel a whole lot better about myself.

The Swiss Family Robinson

Ron Padgett

I never quite understood who
the Swiss Family Robinson were.
The inversion of their name
confused me at an early age,
just as the name of Mary Baker Eddy
sounded as though she started out
as a woman and turned into
a guy named Eddy. At Walt
Disney World there is an attraction
called Swiss Family Robinson that
involves a tree house, so I assume
they lived in a tree. Why they did
I don't know. It sounds rather
stressful to me, the fear
of falling out. I could look up
the Swiss Family Robinson
in a reference book, but
it's interesting not to know
something that everyone else knows.
However, I would like to know if there
are many people named Robinson
in Switzerland. If there are,
I would know something that
most people don't know. 

"The Swiss Family Robinson" by Ron Padgett, from How to Be Perfect. © Coffee House Press, 2007.