For Day 16, I again deviate slightly from the Napowrimo.net prompt, which is to ‘write a poem that prominently features the idea of play.’ Although there is mention of chew toys and football, I went more with playful than play.

Earlier, I was looking up information about presidential pets, because it had occurred to me that I had never seen anything about whether or not the current occupant of the White House has any pets. As it turns out, he is the first US president since Polk (1845–49) to have no pets (although, according to Wikipedia, Andrew Johnson had no pets, but fed white mice he found in his bedroom).

Of course, I started off by reading about Socks Clinton (in part because writer Ijeoma Oluo’s 2016 DNC live tweet, Fun Fact: Socks Clinton is probably dead now, happened to pop into my head unexpectedly). When I read that he never liked the Clintons’ dog, Buddy, it wasn’t hard to imagine a White House staffer being given instructions to keep them apart during some official gathering. I then extended the idea to a reunion of former First Pets…

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