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.