By: Jessica Schlueter and Kaci Noyes

COMPARISON OF “SOMETHING LIKE THAT” BY TIM MCGRAW AND THE

CONGO BY VACHEL LINDSAY

Have you ever had someone walk into your life and change you forever?

Have you ever had an event happen in your life that you will never forget?

Have you ever known or met someone that you will never forget?

Write about a time that someone

WRITING PROMPT

I will never forget my 5th grade teacher Mr. Chris Ellis. I haven’t seen him in 2 years but I still remember his Diet

Coke obsession and his best friend Mr. Yorg.

I will never forget my old cheer coach Fernando because he taught me a lot and I was really close to him.

It was Labor Day weekend I was seventeen

I bought a Coke and some gasoline

And I drove out to the County Fair

And when I saw her for the first time

She was standing there in the ticket line

And it all started right then and there

Oh a sailor's sky made a perfect sunset

And that's a day I'll never forget…

“SOMETHING LIKE THAT”

I had a barbecue stain on my white t-shirt

She was killing me in that mini-skirt

Skippin' rocks on the river by the railroad tracks

She had a sun tan line and red lipstick

I worked so hard for that first kiss

A heart don't forget something like that.

“SOMETHING LIKE THAT”

It was five years later on a south-bound plane

I was headed down to New Orleans,

To meet some friends of mine for the Mardi Gras

When I heard a voice from the past

Coming from a few rows back

When I looked I couldn't believe just what I saw

She said I bet you don't remember me,

And I said only every other memory.

“SOMETHING LIKE THAT”

I had a barbecue stain on my white t-shirt

You were killing me in that mini-skirt

Skippin' rocks on the river by the railroad tracks

You had a sun tan line and red lipstick

I worked so hard for that first kiss

A heart don't forget something like that.

Like an old photograph Time can make a feeling fade

But the memory of the first love Never fades away

“SOMETHING LIKE THAT”

I had a barbecue stain on my white t-shirt She was killing me in that mini-skirt

Skippin' rocks on the river by the railroad tracks

She had a sun tan line and red lipstick I worked so hard for that first kiss

A heart don't forget, no a heart don't forget I said a heart don't forget something like that

Oh, not something like that.

“SOMETHING LIKE THAT”

Their Basic Savagery

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,

Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,

Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a

broom,

Hard as they were able,

Boom, boom, Boom,

With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom.

THE CONGO

THEN I had religion. THEN I had a vision.I could not turn from their revel in derision.

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.Then along that river-bankA thousand milesTattoed canibals danced in flies;

Then I heard the boom from the blood-lust songAnd a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.And “BLOOD” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,“BLOOD” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors,“Whirl ye the deadly voodoo rattle,Harry the uplands,Steal all the cattle,Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattleBing!Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom,”

A roaring, epic, rag-time tune

From the mouth of the Congo

To the Mountains of the Moon.

Death is an Elephant,

Torch-eyed and horrible,

Foam-flanked and terrible.

Boom, …

Boom, …

Boom, …

Like the wind

Hoo, Hoo, Hoo.

THE CONGO

“Something Like That” relates to The Congo because in both the poem and the song they talk about someone or

something that changed them, and they never forgot about it. This is important to teens today because in life you meet

many people you will never forget.