Everybody remembers Shel Silverstein. If you don’t, he is the creepy bearded guy on the back of your favorite childhood poem book, ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends.’ Most childhood poems are meant to teach kids lessons about not to touch things that are not yours, never give up, etc. All that stuff. What if he is really teaching kids about suicide? One of his most famous poems, ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends,’ is seemingly about looking forward to the future and riding off into the sunset. If you look real deep into the bowels of the poem you find connections to ‘accidentally’ falling off the end of the sidewalk. “We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, and watch where the chalk-white arrows go, to the place where the sidewalk end.” Sounds like someone walking to their death…..right? Suicide is no matter to be taken lightly, but how are we going to help prevent it if is fighting us, along with the help of dear old Shel, starting in the teddy bear years?
The Jeffersonian 