Creativity Quote by Allan Sherman

The joke lands because it turns a tired confession into a linguistic pratfall with real economic bite. “Making ends meet” is the standard phrase for scraping by, already a little worn from overuse. Sherman snaps it in half and rebuilds it: if the ends won’t meet, maybe the problem is the “beginnings.” It’s a pun, yes, but it’s also a neat piece of comic accounting, suggesting that poverty isn’t just a temporary shortfall at the finish line; it’s a structural mess from the start.

Sherman’s intent is classic mid-century American humor: make desperation singable. As a musician-comedian best known for parodies, he specialized in translating adult anxieties into catchy, shareable lines you could laugh at without admitting how close they hit. The subtext is that financial struggle is both humiliating and absurd, and the absurdity can be weaponized into control. If you can name your failure in a clever way, you’re not just broke; you’re the narrator.

Context matters: Sherman worked in an era when postwar prosperity was the official story, even as plenty of people felt left out of it. The line quietly mocks that optimism. “Beginnings weren’t meeting either” hints at a life where the fundamentals never aligned - not just bills overdue, but opportunities misfiring, plans not launching, the American promise arriving with missing parts. It’s cynicism delivered with a grin: the punchline is a coping mechanism, and the rhythm makes the complaint feel almost jaunty.