"Eenie meenie minie moe
Catch a tiger by the toe
If he hollers let him go
Eenie meenie minie moe..."
That is about the extent of my memory of playground rhymes employed to choose team members or first player or whatever, “randomly.”
Even as a grade-schooler I could never remember any of the other ones, and there were some I thought were really neat. Some of the other boys remembered some of them and we used them to pick who would be “it” first, but the more mathematically adept kids knew how to manipulate the rhyme and willfully affect the outcome to pick one of the slower runners (me) who would then be “it” for the entire recess period. And there were some girls I went to school with who could remember and recite vast libraries of them. And, for whatever others I could remember then, “Eenie meenie minie moe” is the only one left with me.
Well, there’s just part of another:
“One banana, two banana, three banana, four
Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more.”
Oops! Wrong playground! I meant:
“One potato, two potato, three potato, four…”
…and that’s it.
On this past Christmas morning Mrs. Farrago and I went out for breakfast at a local 24/7 place. Being The Holiday, we were delighted to be seated immediately in a calm, quiet, peaceful restaurant. As we ate (no, I did not conduct any research that morning), a family was seated in the booth across from ours. Well, it was portions of a family. It was a somewhat older couple with a small child – their granddaughter, I’m guessing. She was a cute, chatty little thing and her adult companions seemed to delight in her every word. Then the child spoke in a rhyme that brought back a flood of …not memories, necessarily, but the sense of being a vibrant child on the playground at school, with one foot jammed into a circle of feet, while one kid rhythmically tapped each toe consecutively to the beat of the rhyme, a rhyme I hadn’t heard since at least the sixth grade:
“Bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish
How many pieces do you wish?”
“Seven.”
“One, two, three…..”
I seem to recall there was more to it than just that, but it has all escaped me again. How enthralling that something so simple could spark so sharp a feeling in my gut!
I tried to remember to Mrs. Farrago any of the others I used to hear, but “Eenie meenie” was all that came to me.
I know I have a few of you who pop in from time to time. I couldn’t have reached 1500 hits just by posting and editing (…or could I?). Dig deep into your memories and share with me the rhymes you used to employ to build playground teams or who had to sit with the ugly kid (me again!)
I’ll follow up by letting you know which ones bring me back, and which ones I never heard – or don’t remember.
3 comments:
Ring a ring o'roses
A pocketful of posies
ah-tishoo,ah-tishoo (imitative of sneezing)
We all fall down.
This is a nursery rhyme that comes from 'Mother Goose.'
It's about the black death. The flowers were used to ward off the plague. The sneezing represents the acquisition of the disease.
I think you can guess the rest.
We used to do the "duck, duck, duck, duck, GOOSE!" one, but that was entirely at the discretion of the person doing the duck-duck-ducking. There were others but I forget them.
Toast - Here in the states...or, at least in my region of the states, it was...
Ring around the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Ashes, Ashes
We all fall down!
Strange how kids interpret the words and repeat them as they heard them, and then it becomes "gospel."
Schprock - I remember "duck, duck, goose!" Whenever I think of that game I'm reminded of Nancy Cushman. We were in second grade, sitting in a circle on the playground, not long after the school year had started, so it was still warm outside. Nancy was wearing a pretty dress and black patent leather shoes. Somebody made her the goose, and as she ran after him/her, Nancy's leather soles did what leather soles do on asphalt: they slid out from under her, and Nancy came crashing to the pavement! Scraped up her knee pretty bad, as far as second-graders' knee-scrapes go. I remember I felt bad for her that day. I think I sorta had a crush on Nancy Cushman. She hated me. Then her family moved away about a year later.
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