Dr. Seuss' Happy Birthday to You!

I wish we could do what they do in Katroo.
They sure know how to say "Happy Birthday to You!"

In Katroo, every year, on the day you were born
They start the day right in the bright early morn
When the Birthday Honk-Honker hikes high up Mt. Zorn
And lets loose a big blast on the big birthday Horn.
And the voice of the horn calls out as it plays:
"Wake Up! For today is your Day of all Days!"

So begins Dr. Seuss' much beloved book, Happy Birthday to You! The book goes on, in typical Seuss rhyming verse, to describe all the wonderful, outlandish things the great Birthday Bird of Katroo will do for you on your Day of all Days.

Hidden amidst the tales of feasts (where you "don't have to be tidy or neat" and may "eat with both hands and both feet"), mustard-off pools ("warm water mountain-top tubs...built just for this by the mustard-off clubs"), hippoheimers, hoobubs, and time telling fish are some of my favorite passages of nonsensical philosophy ever penned by man or beast:

If we didn't have birthdays, you wouldn't be you.
If you'd never been born, well then what would you do?
If you'd never been born, well then what would you be?
You might be a fish, or a toad in a tree
You might be a doorknob, or three baked potatoes
You might be a bag full of hard green tomatoes.

Or worse that all that, why you might be a WASN'T!
A Wasn't has no fun at all, no he doesn't.
A Wasn't just isn't.
He just isn't present.
But you, you are you!
And now, isn't that pleasant.

If you'd never been born, then you might be an ISN'T!
An Isn't has no fun at all. No he disn't.
He never has birthdays, and that isn't pleasant.
You have to be born, or you don't get a present.

Today you are you!
That is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is you-er than you.
Shout loud, "I am lucky to be what I am!
Thank goodness I'm not just a clam or a ham
Or a dusty old jar of sour gooseberry jam.
I am what I am, that's a great thing to be!
If I say so myself, happy birthday to me!"