Great Green Globs: Oldies but Goodies
May 12, 2008 by phantommidge
No, no…not a post about colds, I assure you. Instead, I found this great book called Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood by J. Sherman and T. Weisskopf.
How can you resisit a title like that?! They complied lists of all the chants and songs we used when we were kids. The memories came flooding back! Remember the ‘Diarrhea Song”? Or how about “Found a Peanut”?
Sadly, not to sound like an old fuddy-duddy (”kids these days…”) but I think kids probably aren’t learning these anymore with our current ultra-sensitive environment.
Of course, some things HAVE changed…remember when you could sing a nonsense song while riding on the bus about killing your teacher ( “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, There is no school today, Our teacher passed away, We killed her yesterday!”) and no one would actually DO that (and you wouldn’t be expelled for singing it). Scary times today.
The book also discussed where kids picked up these tunes. Most, like me, learned them from camp or from siblings. School actually comes in at number three. There are some pretty graphic rhymes in the book and some with disturbing origins. But, I will leave you with this innocuous one:
Please forgive my being rude,
It was not me, it was my food.
It got so lonely down below,
It just came up to say hello.
MUST … GET … BOOK!!!!!!!!!!
How are YOUR book sales going, BTW?
I should add that all blog readers should rush out and buy:
Steel Remembered: Photos from the LTV Steel Collection
Boy, I wish I knew how sales were going … but I don’t think the publisher even knows, because a good bit of their sales are to wholesalers, who in turn, supply bookstores. So the wholesalers will buy a bunch of books, put them in their own warehouses, and then sell them.
I do know that I had an actual booksigning, and I sold a copy there!
Hey, I’d come to the book signing. Maybe you can invite me over to your yacht when you get rich off all the royalties