I’m going to revisit one of my childhood inspirations, “The Poky Little Puppy.” You probably remember this book from your childhood. A litter of nondescript puppies goes out to play each day with instructions from their mother to return for supper. Day after day, the Poky Little Puppy returns late because he’s been distracted by things like butterflies and gophers. When he gets home, he is scolded and sometimes sent to bed without supper. However, he spots a wild strawberry plant one fine day, gorges himself, and doesn’t give a damn that he has to go to bed without supper. Take that, fascist puppy overlord. He doesn’t need your stinkin’ custard or whatever over-sweetened glop you’re passing off as food. The Poky Little Puppy prevails with his knowledge of nature and self-sufficiency.

Or at least that’s what I thought as a child. Yet it seems like an unlikely choice of morals from “Little Golden Books,” doesn’t it? I doubt they turned a profit by encouraging children to disobey their parents and eat wild plants. So what exactly was the goal of this book?

I looked it up on the ever-useful Wikipedia, and to my shock, this is what I found:

Instead of following his siblings on adventures, the Poky Little Puppy decides to sniff a different patch of grass. In the beginning, his independence is rewarded. The puppies all dig underneath a fence to escape from their yard, but only the Poky Little Puppy’s siblings are caught. The Poky Little Puppy avoids punishment because he’s off exploring as his mother scolds his siblings, and he comes home alone after everyone is asleep. The Poky Little Puppy then eats the rice pudding that the mother was planning to give all the puppies but withheld because of the fence-digging incident. Only at the end of the book, when the puppies make amends with their mother, does fate catch up to the Poky Little Puppy. His siblings enjoy some strawberry shortcake, while the Poky Little Puppy is nowhere to be found. He misses out on the strawberry shortcake, and the book concludes with Poky Little Puppy going to bed without a bite and feeling “very sorry for himself.”

Apparently, my mind had a revisionist streak and a taste for social liberation, even at age 3. Thanks to the author, Janette Seabring Lowrey, for being the unwitting inspiration for my particular brand of … well, whatever you want to call this. Perhaps one of my next stories will be, “Revenge of the Poky Little Puppy.”

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