More reflections on "Puff the Magic Dragon"

[HEyHEY]

I was just thinking and listening to the song again. You know many people say it's about drugs/ end of childhood etc. To me, I think it relates best to my dog Nick. I got him when I was 8 for xmas...all throughout those years it was me and Nick, I came home from school I played with him....all I ever did was hang out with Nick, when I wasn't with my friends who he sometimes came along with. Then as I got older I became interested in other things, girls, jobs, smoking pot (possibly due to the song puff the magic dragon.)

I didn't have time for Nick anymore, I remember sometimes I'd be getting ready to go somewhere and he'd be running around with his toy football trying to get me to play. Then as I walked towards the front door, he'd freeze, and watch me move towards it, then just before I'd get there he'd drop the ball and come to the door just in time for me to close it on him.

So for me, the song is about that. I'm tearing up now, gotta stop writing.

[oneighty]

1. Wait!

I tear with you.

Childhood lost.

180

[HEyHEY]

2. it terrible isn't it

All Nick wanted to do was play..but I had to grow up didn't I? then I swept him aside in the name of sex and drugs.

[gmoney]

3. No, you're thinking of "Dog's in the Cradle"

Puff is totally about drugs. :)

[RC]

5. No, it wasn't

You are too young to know.
Puff was nothing about drugs. I remember Peter/or Paul discussing that song on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. It was just a simple song about a boy with an active imagination.
More fundy BS.

[Philostopher]

4. You're may be too young to remember this one, but ...

Harry Nilsson's 'The Point' does the same thing to me, even though I was never allowed to have a pet as a kid. I really connected with Oblio, who was the misfit. Edit -- Arrow was Oblio's dog, and often his only friend.

The song 'Me And My Arrow' was the most popular one from the soundtrack. It's been redone over the years -- was even used to advertise a crappy Plymouth model back in the '80s called the Arrow -- most recently by Adrian Belew on a tribute album done after Nilsson died.

That one always gets to me.

[JVS]

6. You should write a thesis on this

or sue the record companies for traumatizing you. Find a way to enrich yourself. :D

[RandomKoolzip]

7. my wife claims that "Puff" is the saddest song ever written

I gotta admit, hearing the melody is just...I dunno...they must have magically evoked the spirit of melancholy when they wrote that melody. It IS just insanely sad. It makes me choke up just thinking about it...

God, I'm a dork!