When You Can’t Forget
I’ve seen a Jack Prelutsky poem circulating on Bluesky, and… I want to like it. I want to like his work. I used to like it—love it, even—but as the saying goes, “Don’t meet your heroes.”
I grew up… not poor, exactly, but we didn’t have excess for anything unnecessary. When Prelutsky’s book The New Kid on the Block came out, everyone was reading it. Teachers read it to our class. And then! Jack Prelutsky came to our school!
I couldn’t afford a copy of the book, but I stood in line with my friend (she had bought a copy) to meet him. And… I’ve blocked out the specifics, but I do recall he was very unkind to me, a kid who couldn’t afford his book and was clearly wasting his time. I remember being in tears.
This was so long ago. I was, like, eight years old. And I don’t think about it ever, except when I see Jack Prelutsky’s name, or one of his poems, turn up somewhere. I don’t own any of his books now, either, and never will. My kids have never heard of him (unless they read this blog). Fuck that guy. Do I like his poems? Yeah, I do. But I’ll never have a good feeling about them. I’ll never associate anything but pain with him and his work.
Yeah, I’m one person, and it’s not like it hurt him or his career any to be an asshole to a kid. My personal boycott of him doesn’t matter a whit to him, but it means a lot to me and mine.