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The elephant in the room that isn’t there —
He’s hard to walk around. He’s big and grey.
My Mummy says it’s not polite to stare.
He never moves. He can’t fit in a chair,
Just standing there. He’s always in the way,
The elephant in the room that isn’t there.
Sometimes, at night, I send a little prayer
For God to shoo him out so I can play.
My Mummy says it’s not polite to stare
And if I do, she ruffles up my hair
And asks me what I learned in school today.
The elephant in the room that isn’t there
Has squashed us all apart. It isn’t fair,
But if I ask about him what they say
Is: ‘Mummy says it’s not polite to stare.’
The grown-ups are pretending not to care —
We never ask how long he wants to stay.
Dear elephant in the room who isn’t there,
My Mummy says it’s not polite to stare.
This is a reworking of a piece (author unknown) of the same name which has floated around the internet for years. It has been used in messages of bereavement, in political debates, in newspaper cartoons and goodness knows where else. The first section of the original is reproduced below:
There’s an elephant in the room.
It is large and squatting, so it is hard to get around it.
Yet we squeeze by with “How are you?” and “I’m fine,” and a thousand other
forms of trivial chatter. We talk about the weather. We talk about work.
We talk about everything else, except the elephant in the room.
