THE FATHER OF A BOY NAMED SUE
As recorded by Shel Silverstein on "Songs and Stories" (2011).

Okay now, years ago I wrote a song called "Boy Named Sue," and that was okay and everything, except then I started thinkin' about it, and I thought it was unfair. I am lookin' at the whole thing from the poor kid's point of view, and as I get older and more fatherly, I began to look at things from old men's point of view, so I decided to give the old man equal time. Okay, here we go:

Yeah, I left home when the kid was three,
And it sure felt good to be fancy-free,
Though I knew it wasn't quite the fatherly thing to do;
But that kid kept screamin' an' throwin' up,
And pissin' in his pants till I had enough,
So just for revenge I went and named him Sue.

It was Gatlinburg in mid-July.
I was gettin' drunk but gettin' by,
Gettin' old and goin' from bad to worse,
When through the door with an awful scream
Comes the ugliest queen I've ever seen.
He says: "My name is Sue! How do you do!" Then he hits me with his purse.

Now this ain't the way he tells the tale,
But he scratched my face with his fingernails,
And then he bit my thumb and kicked me with his high-heeled shoe.
So I hit him in the nose and he started to cry,
And he threw some perfume in my eye,
And it sure ain't easy fightin' a boy named Sue.

So I hit him in the head with a cane-back chair,
And he screamed: "Hey, Dad! You mussed my hair!"
And he hit me in the navel and knocked out a piece o' my lint.
He was spittin' blood; I was spittin' teeth,
And we crashed through the wall and out into the street,
A-kickin' an' gougin' in the mud and the blood and the cr?me de menthe.

Then out o' his garter he pulls a gun.
I'm about to get shot by my very own son!
He's screamin' 'bout Sigmund Freud and lookin' grim;
So I thought fast and I told him some stuff,
How I named him Sue just to make him tough,
And I guess he bought it 'cause now I'm livin' with him.

Yeah, he cooks and sews and cleans up the place.
He cuts my hair and shaves my face,
And irons my shirts better than a daughter could do,
And on the nights that I can't score,
Well, I can't tell you any more,
But it sure is a joy to have a boy named Sue.

Yeah, a son is fun, but it's a joy to have a boy named Sue.