The Top of My Hot Dog

(sing to the tune of: "On Top of Old Smoky") 

A funny poem for summer time about an unwanted hot dog topping.

The top of my hot dog

is no longer bare.

It now has a topping

I didn't want there.

I ordered my hot dog.

ordered it plain,

without any toppings.

I ordered in vain.

Well, I started eating,

Then looked up in the air,

and I saw a sea gull,

which gave me a scare.

 
I covered my hot dog

a second too late.

What fell from that sea gull

is too gross to relate.

The top of my hot dog

is no longer bare.

It now has a topping

a sea gull put there.

 Visit robertpottle.com for permission to use this funny poem .

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The Top of My Hot Dog is  a funny poem I wrote several years ago. It has appeared in books such as MAINE: The Way Wildlife Should Be and Oh, My Darling Porcupine .


I had a lot of fun writing this poem. I grew up on an island in Maine. It's not quite an island any more, a road was built to connect it to the mainland, but the name of the town is Eastport. In Eastport there is a hot dog stand that has been down on one of the docks for as long as I can remember. It is still there today. As you may be able to imagine there are lots of seagulls that like to hang out at that hot dog stand looking for an easy meal. I have never had a sea gull leave a gift for me on my hot dog, but I did have one leave a gift for me on my french fries once and on my hat a few times.


In this funny poem, I enjoy the way I avoid actually saying what the seagull left for a topping. I think the way that I avoid saying that is funnier than if I had spelled it out.

If I ever sign a copy of one of the books this poem is in for you, I usually sign it, "Watch out for gulls!" Now I write that to be funny, but it also has a deeper meaning. As a kid in school, I was always dreaming of big things I would do when I grew up. When I shared these dreams a lot of my friends would laugh and say, "You can't do those things you're just a kid from Eastport, Maine." After a while I stopped sharing my dreams, but I didn't stop having them.

Now as a children's author and Giggle Poet I am living a dream. When I sign books with, "Watch out for gulls!"  What I'm really trying to say is, "Don't let people dump on your dreams. Keep your dreams alive."

Here are some tips for make your dreams come true.

1. Define your dream. Write it down. Write it in the past tense. Be specific, and set a deadline. For example, one of my goals, that was written down was, "I published my first book of children's poetry before I turned 30." My first book of children's funny poems, MAINE: The Way Life Is , came out two months after my 30th birthday.

2. Learn from your failures. Remember what you learned, forget the failure. If you set a big goal for yourself, you will fail along the way. Don't let that failure stop you, learn from it, get stronger from it, move on from it. Everytime I received a rejection letter from a publisher I said to myself, "I'm going to write this over again and do it so well, they can't reject it." After years of doing this my writing became good enough to be published.

3. Don't blame others when things are bad. Blaming others is wasted energy. Do your best at everything you can control, even if it's, "some elses job to do it." This may sound strange today where everyone claims to be a victim, or is telling you you are a victim. Decide to be a survivor not a victim, it makes all the difference.

Wow, that all got pretty serious for a funny poem about a sea gull dropping, but many of my funny poems have deep meanings that inspired them. I just try to hide those deep meanings so they can't be found when reading the poem. I want the humor to come first.