Naming ceremony reading

Being Small

Sometimes I just hate being small,
When everybody else is tall,
I think the world is most unfair
With me down here and them up there.

It’s awful when a juicy peach
Is in a bowl far out of reach
Or parents have safely put away
The toys with which I want to play.

It’s terrible to have to stretch
For everything you want to fetch
While bigger people help themselves
To things from off the highest shelves.

Perhaps it might be less unfair
If they were kind of stuck up there
And had to wait till I came round
To give them things from off the ground;

But no, they can easily bend,
To fetch and carry, make and mend,
While if I want to reach that cup,
I have no way of bending up!

John Maguire