What’s your favorite schoolyard rhyme? Maybe it’s the singsong taunt that goes, “Girls go to college to get more knowledge, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.” Or the romantic standby about two lovebirds sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Some playground chants are rude, others are crude, and many involve figuring out that whole business about the birds and the bees. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Schoolyard Rhymes”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
As long as we’ve had schoolyards, we’ve had schoolyard rhymes.
Those rhythmic sing-song verses are one way that children poke fun and test limits.
And a lot of those rhymes, of course, are crude, and some of them, unfortunately, are quite cruel.
The other ones, the ones that I’m drawn to, are just plain silly.
When you think back to your own days on the playground, what verses come to mind?
For me, it’s things like Johnny and Mary sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage.
And I guess a lot of these verses were about trying to figure out at that age what love and babies had to do with each other.
Very good.
And I also remember the taunting back and forth between the sexes.
Grant, do you remember this one?
Boys are rotten, made out of cotton.
Girls are handy, made out of candy.
Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.
Girls go to Mars to get more candy bars.
I learned that from my niece, Madison, actually.
Really?
Yeah, I never knew that one in my own years.
Really?
Well, I know you love these things.
I do.
Yeah, the songs are the ones that I love.
We did all the verses to Glory, Glory, Hallelujah that we made up and the ones that traveled around.
Yeah, you can sing.
Glory, glory, hallelujah.
Teacher hit me with the ruler.
Shot her in the butt with the rotten coconut and she don’t teach no more.
And we made up like 15 or 20 verses.
Some of them we thought we made up, but they just were traveling in the ether from year to year.
Student to students, school to school, right?
Yeah, yeah.
We sang a different version of that.
All the stuff.
But it is.
It’s about you are the least powerful person in your life.
Your parents have power.
Your teachers have power.
The older students have power.
The bus driver has power, right?
Yep, yep.
And it is a way of kind of undermining the authority structures around you by mocking
Them gently, sometimes not so gently.
Yeah, yeah.
And just trying to figure it all out, too.
We’d love to hear your playground rhymes.
What are the things that you said when you were in school?
Or what are the things that your children and grandchildren say now?
Email us, words@waywordradio.org.
