Nine Tales From the Heart

Mooney Gin Rummy, the Ventriloquist Dummy

Mooney Gin Rummy, the Ventriloquist Dummy,
sat up in bed with an aching tummy!
On a fine sunny day
in a small Swiss town.
Mooney Gin Rummy was feeling down.

He moaned and groaned as he rolled out of bed
to find his friend Donny Pumpkin Head.
He walked to the place where Don sat on a shelf
and said, "Dear Don, what’s the matter with myself?"

"I woke up with a bellyache!
Could it be from the jellybeans I ate?"
Donny replied, "Well, my boy, it’s hard to say;
let’s go see the puppet doctor today!"

The two skipped down through the small Swiss square
and into the office of the puppet doctor there.
"Good morning, my man," the doctor said.
"You have a tummy ache and your face is quite red!"
He opened Mooney’s wooden belly door
and out flew butterflies across the floor!
So sappy and sore was Mooney’s wooden head,
the puppet doctor had to lay him in bed.
He checked his wooden feet and toes.
He looked down his mouth and checked his nose.

At last the puppet doctor sighed and cried,
"My dear Mooney, there is nothing wrong inside!
Perhaps your bellyache is not from jellybeans at all.
Maybe you are sad, or angry or feeling quite small."

"Sometimes we say our body hurts in our tummy down there,
when really it’s because we are feeling scared.
Our feelings are important to us and to those who care!"

"Although sometimes we are really ill,
talking about feelings is the best thing still!
For when we really look inside,
we find out there’s really nothing to hide!"

Mooney began to wonder, to feel and to think.
He wrote down how he felt with pen and ink.
He took some paper from the shelf,
and he wrote a letter to himself:

"My tummy has been achy
because I’ve been shaky!
I’ve been feeling too shy to tell children my jokes.
I think I’ll do a show and invite friends and folks!"