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Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, United States

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Nobodies

Kander and Ebb wrote a show-stopping number
for Chicago, called Mr. Cellophane.
You can walk right by me, see right through me,
I'm Mr. Cellophane.
In short, he is a nobody, a man of no distinction.

Obituary writers find it difficult to pad the
resumes of nobodies.
Yet the world functions by the efforts of nobodies.
They get the job done, with no glory,
and little praise.

Sometimes a nobody is in the course of history,
Like Neil Armstrong, who credits
The people who got him to the moon,
But avoids personal attention.

A nobody finishes school, gets a job, marries,
stays out of jail.
Psychologists call that normal behavior.
A nobody wakes up, gets to work on time,
does what is asked.

If a nobody lives long enough to retire,
He or she looks back at life, and says,
I did that, whatever it was,
That made the world a better place.

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