Gary Wall

Well my name is Gary Wall and I’m no one

     very special

Just a short-order cook, and I’m forty years old

And I drifted all my life from job to job

But this livin’ all alone can make a man feel cold.

And the walls have ears, from listenin’ to me talkin’

It’s been years since I had reason, t’get up out of bed

Then the paper caught my eye, “Be a foster parent!”

“Somebody needs you!” is what it said.

So I opened up my place for some kids to live

Some stayed awhile, and some ran away

Hard-luck kids when they had any luck at all

But my house became a home where kids could stay

One tough little nine-year old and I did fine

But when I wanted to adopt him, the courts

     said “NO!”

Cause I had no wife, still we loved each other,

I made him a promise that I’d never go.

I fought in the court, they made me study

     at the college

I took auto parts and math and my requirement

     in gym

Two years of never knowin’ was hard on me

But my kid was just a kid and it was worse on him.

Ev’ry night I punched the clock at the local diner

And we kept on swimmin’ in the court’s red-tape

Til seventeen thousand people from the town

Wrote a letter to the judge, who said “Okay”

Well my name is Gary Wall and I’m no one

     very special

And I eat my own cookin’ so I’m overweight

But now I got a kid, and he’s got me

And it’s a whole lot nicer to get up and face the day!!

Written by Peter Alsop, ©1981, Moose School Music (BMI)

On Uniforms – www.peteralsop.com