In an elementary school class we discussed this song.
The teacher encouraged questions about its possible meaning. Was it about growing up and leaving childhood behind? Much later, kids speculated that Puff was a reference to being high on marijuana.
The question I didn’t ask, for fear of sounding stupid was, what is ceiling wax? The question soon came to mind again, with this record.
This confused me for a long time, until eventually I saw something on TV that made me realize it was sealing, not ceiling, wax.
I didn’t actually read the Alice books until I was in college.
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my memory my be failing but didnt mr(or was he rev.) c. l. dodgson once have a certain walrus speaking of”… shoes and ships and sealing wax and of cabbages and kings”
Cool story, and an understandable misunderstanding. I knew what it was “sealing wax: from the start, as I had read about it in one of the roughly 5,000 sixth grade level books they relented and gave me early on at Winnepauk. Darn, we had a cool childhood.