A Nearly Lost America's Funniest Home Videos Poem

A pre-pre school classroom
Green-walled and cheerful.
Little ones have been dressed for a little party
In bows and bow ties, bowed smiles
Ordered, happy and clean.

But the pinata is far too high,
It is a distant star in that toddler stratosphere, the latex-blue ceiling.
A young teacher, a mighty but friendly giant to the children, pokes absently at the paper star
with her 2nd best broom:

And so, absently, she strikes the sprinkler head.

There is a brief shock, a fractional delight
Tiny faces uncertain, smiling, then frowning,
Watching the Room 137 thunderclouds open, the heavens open, and yes,
they see now, everywhere they turn, their clothes,
the pinata, the teachers, the cake-
the cake!-

very, very wet and much more water yet to spray.

Now emerges the most perfect pandemonium:

A badger drops into a bedroom of pigeons.
A shark plops into a swimming pool full of cats.
Into the chicken shed with twelve drunk teenagers.

Run and scream and cry in all directions each, a sea of waving little arms,
Inconsequentially panicked.

Like the end of a muppet sketch,
This is a cheery rugrat apocalypse.