Little Debbie

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a lunchbox opening, cellophane)
She's alive. That's the headline. She's alive and she goes to work.

[Verse 1]
Nineteen sixty, a bakery in Tennessee,
and O.D. McKee has a new line and needs a name for it,
and there's a photograph on his desk of his granddaughter,
four years old, in a straw hat, in a gingham shirt,
and he uses it. Without asking her, because she's four.
And she has been on the box ever since. Every box.

[Chorus]
Little Debbie! There's a Debbie! There has always been a Debbie!
She is a grown woman with a job and an office and a life!
She runs part of the company! She is an executive!
The girl in the straw hat signs off on actual decisions!
Little Debbie. Not a drawing. Not invented.
A four-year-old who grew up and went into the family firm.

[Verse 2]
And they've updated the picture a few times over the years —
softened it, modernised it, brought the colours up —
so the version on the shelf is not exactly her,
it's a painting of a photograph of a child who is now grown.
She's said it's strange sometimes. She's said it's mostly fine.
She's said the hardest part is that the girl stays four.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And after all the invented ones — the founders who were never born,
the uncles who were captions, the farmers played by actors —
here's a woman in an office in Tennessee this morning,
who is the brand, who has always been the brand,
who did not lose her name, who did not sell her face,
who simply is the person on the box. Still. Right now.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the lunchbox closing)
She's at work today.
Somewhere, right now, she's at work.